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Multiple cultures, generns unite to remember Manzanar |
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
 Former Manzanar internee Mary Kageyama Nomura carries her camp’s plaque to be placed on the monument during Saturday’s interfaith service. Nomura, widely-known as the “Songbird of Manzanar,” earned the title thanks to her talented singing and the recordings made of her performances during her time at Manzanar. Photo by Ken Koerner By Ken Koerner
Register Staff 4-29-2008
For 120,000 Japanese-Americans forced to leave their homes, their businesses and their lives in the wake of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into World War II, it is evident there are some painful memories which linger to this day.
That said, it was also very clear from comments related during this past weekend’s 39th Annual Manzanar Pilgrimage that recollections of resilience, community, shared struggle and work – and even light-hearted human moments – are also an enduing aspect of the legacy of life behind the barbed-wire perimeter of the Manzanar War Relocation Center.
“My first impression upon arriving at Manzanar was how very windy it was there. My family and I made the nine-hour trip from what was our home in Los Angeles and arrived at dusk,” former internee Sets Tomita said. “I was a young boy and to me it seemed a very weird setting. Plus, there were so many people, so many Japanese people. I’d never seen so many Japanese people together in one spot like that before.”
A crowd estimated at 1,200 to 1,600 people traveled from as far away as New York City to take part in Saturday’s annual event of remembrance.
The Manzanar Committee, in association with the National Park Service, has continued to make a commitment each year to bring attention and reverence to the plight of those thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry that were ripped from their lives and sent to a dusty, square-mile camp in the Owens Valley.
Under blue skies on a hot, spring day, the thousand-plus visitors at this year’s Manzanar Pilgrimage participated in a special noon ceremony that included multiple speakers, music, group-singing, laughter and a reverential look back at the Manzanar experience. It was also a day punctuated by multi-culturalism.
Beyond the prominent presence of former Manzanar internees, their families and friends, the pilgrimage also drew a contingent of more than 100 American-Muslims. In an address during the ceremony by Council on American-Islamic Relations Executive Director Hussam Ayloush, it was made clear that the misplaced fears that resulted in the internment of so many Japanese-Americans during those war years can cause concerns in today’s post-9/11 climate for Arab-American citizens.
“We know now what it feels like when people look at you with suspicion, or treat you like you are a second-class citizen,” Ayloush said. “Our presence here today isn’t meant to suggest Arab-Americans are facing the threat and the loss of freedom of those Manzanar internees, but we want to stand with our Japanese-American citizens wishing to ensure this could never happen again. Like them, we want to remember the past and to learn from it.”
Student groups bonded to the Manzanar experience by family lineage, or by their determination to honor one of the Manzanar Committee’s foundational pillars – to “never let such a thing happen again” – were also well-represented among the pilgrimage’s attendees.
“I came here expecting to hear more about the resistance actions of the people imprisoned at Manzanar, but I was surprised to learn about how resilient the internees were – how they created a new life and a fairly vibrant community within the confines of that camp,” Stanford University student Theresa Zhen said. “They planted gardens of Japanese vegetables, created a park for their children and lived in relative harmony with one another, despite the austere conditions and lack of basic privacy they faced.”
Following remarks by the program’s speakers, who addressed the large crowd from atop a Los Angles Department of Water and Power flat-bed truck, the audience flowed to the adjacent Manzanar monument, located in the camp’s historic cemetery.
With the throng now gathered in a sea of solemn faces, the pilgrimage’s traditional interfaith service was conducted at the signature Manzanar monument.
A procession of internees approached the iconic tower, holding in their arms a wooden plaque emblazoned with the name of the internment camp where they had been held, and a rose. For those camps for which no internee was able to be present, Manzanar Committee volunteers carried the designated camp plaque with equal dignity.
The Manzanar plaque was carried by Mary Kageyama Nomura, known as “the Songbird of Manzanar” for her beautiful voice and the recordings that were made of her singing during her internment at Manzanar.
The interfaith service included prayers offered by representatives of the Buddhist, Christian and Islamic faiths.
With the completion of the service at the monument, participants moved toward a fleet of chartered buses that stood awaiting passengers, toward private cars driven to this far west sector of the camp, or walked the considerable distance back to the National Historical Site’s 8,000 square-foot interpretive center.
Among the many exhibits that comprise the interpretive center, the experiences of those living within the confines of Manzanar were reflected in historical photographs, texts and films for the hundreds of visitors present.
Prior to buses departing for the annual component of the Manzanar Pilgrimage known as “Manzanar After Dark” being held this year at the Lone Pine High School auditorium, attendees heading toward their transportation were treated to a rather unanticipated Owens Valley sight just outside the interpretive center, as afternoon prayers were observed by kneeling American-Muslims facing east.
The evening’s MAD program began with a screening of the documentary film, “Music Man of Manzanar,” detailing the efforts of the camp’s music teacher, Lou Frezzell. Frezzell spent his years as Manzanar’s musical and drama teacher attempting to bring artistic and performance skills to the camp’s many students.
In the wake of the film’s screening, “focus groups” were formed to share the varied and personal Manzanar pilgrimage experience each participant was taking away from the special day.
Groups sat both inside the auditorium and gathered in various groups on the lawn outside, seeking to find the commonality that could be mined from the collective individual impressions each now carried with them.
It was obvious from observing and listening to the focus groups’ conversations, that everyone felt connected to the historical lessons and experience of the “citizens” of Manzanar and the nine other Japanese-American internment camps. It was equally obvious that each group was focused on the vigilance that seems essential to ensuring such a circumstance is never visited upon another group of Americans.
For more information about the Manzanar Historical Site, call (760) 878-2727, or visit one of these Web sites: www.manzanarcommittee.org or www.nps.gov/manz.
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 25 June 2008 )
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