Manzanar

Manzanar lies on the floor of the Owens Valley, with Mount Williamson rising directly to the west. Most of the camp’s buildings are gone; the site includes a cemetery, historic orchards, and a visitor center. Photographers including Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange documented life there during the war.

Earlier displacements. People used the Owens Valley for almost 10,000 years, and about 1,500 years ago the Owens Valley Paiute established settlements there, practicing a form of irrigated agriculture. After miners and ranchers moved in during the 1860s, the Army forcibly relocated nearly 1,000 Paiute to Fort Tejon in 1863. From 1910 the farm town of Manzanar grew apples, pears, peaches, and other crops. But Los Angeles bought up the valley’s water rights for its aqueduct, completed in 1913; by 1929 the city owned all of Manzanar’s land and water, and within five years the town was abandoned.

The camp. In 1942 the Army leased 6,200 acres at Manzanar from Los Angeles to confine Japanese Americans. Some valley residents opposed the camp; others helped build it and worked there. Families lived there in a fenced and guarded camp.

Remembrance. After the war nearly all of the camp’s roughly 800 buildings were removed. Former incarcerees and their descendants return each April on a pilgrimage, and the National Park Service has collected more than 715 oral history interviews about the camp and the valley.