A Deeper Understanding

On March 15th, 2025, the TOMODACHI and Kakehashi Scholars took a 4 hour drive to the Manzanar Incarceration Camp. The importance of Manzanar was that this was one of the many incarceration camps Japanese Americans were sent to when Executive Order 9066 took effect. Executive Order 9066 was the start of the forced movement of Japanese Americans to Manzanar and other incarceration camps.

At this one specifically, we walked through an indoor museum and saw newspaper articles from WWII about Japanese Americans. This really stuck with me in the sense that I've never seen newspaper articles from that time. Additionally, it opened my eyes to another ethnic group in American history that was discriminated against to some substantial degree. I also saw all the names are of the Japanese Americans incarcerated during the operation of Manzanar in the museum. I was shocked at how they were able to recover each individuals' identities from this time period.

Soon after, we walked outside and saw where the incarcerated lived their day-to-day life. Nothing was really in the area: just a wall of mountains surrounding the dusty, sandy ground where the incarcerated lived. It felt so isolating being at Manzanar, even just for a few hours.

Through different parts of this trip, it was reemphasized to u that the incarcerated spent years in conditions worse than the conditions of the day we visited Manzanar. It was hard to imagine, but I got a sense of what it could possibly look like.

Walking back from the Memorial.

We then had lunch in one of the food halls that resembled what the food halls looked like back during WWII. After lunch, we went on a long walk, closer to the mountains, to vist a memorial. The memorial was in remembrance of all the lives that were present during the operations of Manzanar.

This trip really took my mind out of the classroom and showed me a little snippet of what Japanese Americans had to go through during WWII. I went in, not knowing what to expect; I came out with a deeper sense of how afraid the American government gets when at war with another country.