Manzanar

John Armor, 1988.

With photos by Ansel Adams.

The book begins with an introduction to the purpose of Manzanar. Ansel Adams was asked to take photos of the camp in 1943 and it composed the only "photo essay" that he ever did.

Interestingly enough, neither he nor any other photographers were allow to photograph the guard towers, the guards or the barbed wire. The book then goes into a brief history of the evacuation from the West Coast, the assembly centers, the attack on Pearl Harbor and its immediate aftermath.

The book has an interesting discussion about San Francisco on the night of Dec. 8. This is the night that there was a false alarm of an air-raid of the city. I read elsewhere that there was some firing that resulted in shells landing on cars and the like and damaging them. This books adds that planes searched for six hundred miles offshore and found no Japanese carrier and no Japanese planes. Although an air-raid was sounded, San Francisco made no effort as a city to achieve a blackout.

The next day DeWitt called a meeting at the City Hall where DeWitt laid into them, claiming there were enemy planes that were tracked out to sea and that it might have been good if a few bombs had been dropped so "It might have awakened some of the fools in this community who refuse to realize that this is a war."

In this case, the fool was DeWitt.

A couple of nights later DeWitt supposedly heard a rumor of a planned uprising of 20,000 Nisea in the San Francisco area. The information came from a person an FBI agent described as a flake. On the night of the 12th there was a rumor of an imminent enemy attack on Los Angeles and DeWitt almost advised all the people in the city to evacuate. That night a general described DeWitt as "a jackass."

A good judge of character.

The book goes on to describe more absurd rumors and allegations, and DeWitt's report that was ridiculed by J.Edgar Hoover. It then goes into the history of racism in California. Then it notes a bit later on how DeWitt complained when he asked for reinforcements for the Western Defense Command and he felt that too many of them were black. He said "I'd rather have a white regiment."

Equal-opportunity hater, that man.

More details about the history of the evacuation plans and implementation are then included. Then it covers the history all the way to the closing of the camps.

The next part of the book is "A Portrait of Manzanar." This section starts out going further into the history of the evacuation program, then finally ends up talking about Manzanar itself, although parts about the camp itself are mentioned intermixed into parts dealing with the camps in general.

An extremely interesting thing pointed out is that, during World War II, ten people were convicted of spying for Japan. Not a single one was Japanese or Japanese-American. They were all white.

The book describes more about Manzanar, including information about the camp newspaper, then talks about the Nisei who served in the U.S. military. Finally, the redress movement is discussed.

There is no doubt that the photographs are of very high quality. There is also some good information on Manzanar, but the book is slightly deceptive in a way since it is titled Manzanar but includes a good bit of non-Manzanar information.

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