The Manzanar Pilgrimage

(Photos by Mario G. Reyes/RAFU SHIMPO)

Every year on the last Saturday in April, hundreds of Japanese Americans wake up before the sun rises and board a bus. The bus takes them from downtown Los Angeles, one of the biggest metropolitan hubs in the country, to the middle of the Owens Valley, to Inyo County, CA where there is nothing but dead plants and desert (and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains.)

Why do they do this?

They are partaking in the Manzanar Pilgrimage, an annual event that brings hundreds of people to the site of one of the largest Japanese American internment camps during World War II when Executive Order 9066 (approved and signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942) ordered them to leave their homes, families and friends and move to some of the most barren locations in America. Manzanar was one of those places.

More than 10,000 people called Manzanar home from March 1942 to the end of the war. It was the largest "city" from Reno to Los Angeles at its peak.

The pilgrimage is a recognition of this violation of civil rights. But it is also a celebration of a culture that has flourished since. The program includes a memorial service for those who died in the camps and dancing for those who survived it. Speakers implore those in the audience to do everything in their power to prevent something like this from happening again. They also tell stories and jokes, sing, even banter with the pilgrims as well.

And this journey is not just for Japanese Americans. The pilgrimage, now in its 39th year, is getting bigger by the year. Organizers said this years' was the biggest turnout in its history, mostly on the strength of non-JA pilgrims. There were high school students, college students, professors on sabbatical, seminary graduates, retirees from the East Coast, people of all races, creeds and colors at this year's pilgrimage.

I participated in my first pilgrimage this year, covering it for the bilingual newspaper where I work while going to school, The Rafu Shimpo . The following is a collection of stories, videos, photos and thoughts that I gathered during my trip. Enjoy!

If you need a brush-up on your World War II relocation camp history (or if you have never heard of a Japanese American internment camp before) the information is too rich and dense to condense here. The Wikipedia article on the internment era is a great place to start though.

Welcome to Manzanar: A Video Gallery

To introduce you to the Manzanar campsite, its culture and to some of the pilgrims, here are a collection of videos I shot during my journey. I had to travel light so I only took the company digital camera and used its video function. The sound quality is a bit choppy but you can hear everything that's going on.

Before the speaker program starts, Laura Engelken and Kat Townes from the Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion tie solidarity flags along the outside of the cemetery monument inside the Manzanar campsite.



Bagpiper Dan Sprague pays his respects at an unmarked gravesite inside the Manzanar cemetery. He takes a couple of seconds to tune up, but once he does, it's quite a remarkable moment.



Pilgrims join in and sing "Don't Fence Me In," an annual tradition as part of the speaker program. They are led by members of UCLA Kyodo Taiko.



Mary Kageyama Nomura, the famed Songbird of Manzanar, followed with her rendition of "The Manzanar Song," which was written by the late Louie Frizzell, a beloved teacher at Manzanar High School.



One of the more powerful traditions of the pilgrimage is the "roll call of the camps." Each year, 10 people are selected to represent the 10 internment camps (Manzanar, CA; Tule Lake, CA; Poston, AZ; Gila River, AZ; Granada, CO; Heart Mountain, WY; Minidoka, ID; Topaz, UT; Rohwer, AK; and Jerome, AK) that were opened during World War II, forcing hundreds of thousands of Japanese Americans to uproot throughout the war. Volunteers take a piece of wood with the name of a camp inscribed on it from the dais across to the cemetery and place it on the monument. An interfaith memorial service is held afterwards. You can see parts of the Shinto ceremony after the roll call.



After the memorial service, the program ends with a traditional Tanko Bushi Ondo dance led by UCLA Kyodo Taiko. These dances have been performed for centuries and depict scenes of traditional Japanese life. This particular dance shows the life of a coal miner.

Manzanar Turns 39

Here is a news article I wrote for the Rafu Shimpo about this year's Manzanar Pilgrimage. For a more feature-styled, personal account I've also included another article at the bottom of the blog.


MANZANAR PILGRIMAGE TURNS 39

The 39th Annual Manzanar Pilgrim­age was one of the most successful trips in its history, according to organizers, as upwards of 300 participants made the journey to the former Japanese Ameri­can internment campsite Saturday.

It was a day best defined by its diversity, as pilgrims of varying ages, ethnicities and backgrounds visited the Manzanar National Historic Site, many of whom were participating for the first time. Former internees were joined by their children and grandchildren, curi­ous high school students arrived in their friends’ cars and buses teemed with various secular, academic and religious groups, making this year’s pilgrimage one of its most diverse.

“I think we’re all here for a good reason,” said Hussan Ayloush, execu­tive director of the Southern California branch of the Council on American Islamic Relations, speaking on behalf of the gathered crowd, which included over 100 Muslim Americans. “To pay tribute to the courage and the sacrifices of the Japanese American community. In the Forties, they had to pay a price to ensure that the Civil Liberties of all Americans were protected. We owe them so much, we owe them a great debt and we’re all here to pay that
tribute to them.”

The Muslim-American contingent, which has been growing steadily within the last few years, was the largest in the pilgrimage’s history. Their community has joined the pilgrimage in solidarity after the Japanese American community reached out to them following the Sept. 11 attacks.

The variety of speakers was indicative of the growing diversity of the event. Addressing the pilgrims from a Department of Water and Power truck bed on the periphery of the site’s cemetery, the program’s speakers emphasized the importance of remembering the past, and in recognition of the mixed crowd—who may not have a personal connection to Manzanar—the power of individualized insight.

“We all may think the same and see the same, but we’re all going to leave here with different things: different thoughts, different experiences, different ways to continue the legacy,” said Stacy Iwata, president of the UCSD Nikkei Student Union.

After a rousing call to order from solo bagpiper Dan Sprague, emcee Darell Kunitomi led the crowd in a sing-along of Don’t Fence me In, accompanied by UCLA Kyodo Taiko and keyboardist Scott Nagatani.

The Manzanar Committee began the day’s program by presenting four certificates of appreciation. Bruce Embrey—the son of Sue Kunitomi Embrey, the founder of the Manzanar Committee—awarded certificates on-stage to photographer Archie Miyatake, whose father documented camp life through pictures and who remains an active community photographer in his own right; Lillian Kawasaki, president of the Friends of Manzanar; and
Alisa Lynch, chief of interpretation at the Manzanar Historic Site. Another certificate was presented to Crystal Geyser, who supplied pilgrims with bottled water, a much-needed comfort in the blistering desert climate.

Mary Kageyama Nomura, the famed Songbird of Manzanar, followed with her rendition of “The Manzanar Song,” which was written by the late Louie Frizzell, a beloved teacher at Manzanar High School.

The sing-alongs and Tanko Bushi Ondo (traditional Japanese dances) may appear to some as inappropriate during an event at a site that once represented persecution and civil injustice. But the most striking—and the most compelling—aspect of the pilgrimage is that it is not simply a time of mourning. Though it is certainly a time of respect and remembrance, it is also a celebration, a commemoration for this community to show how far it has come since Relocation.

“Because it is a pilgrimage, we go back [to Manzanar] to remember and yet also to celebrate where we’ve come, and our past, and what we are trying to do for our future,” said pilgrim Patty Nagano.

This is not to say that the pilgrimage does not offer its share of respect. After the speakers finished, a group of 10 internees and community volunteers gathered at the base of the DWP truck, each cradling wooden placards in their arms. Each placard had the name of one of the 10 internment camps written on the front.

Emcee Kunitomi then called out the name of each camp as its placard carrier walked it silently over to the cemetery. The crowd followed the volunteers into the cemetery for an interfaith memorial service in front of the cemetery’s iconic monument.

In keeping with the theme of diversity, several denominations contributed to the service. A Shinto priest blessed the buried dead and was followed by words and prayers from Buddhist, Christian and Muslim officials. Pilgrims were then invited to offer incense.

The interfaith service is the most personal experience the pilgrimage has to offer. It is not the day’s most fun or celebratory portion, but it is the only time where the pilgrims can participate as an individual. It is the pilgrimage at its most stirring.

“A pilgrimage is not a vacation. It is a transformational journey during which significant changes take place,” said keynote speaker Dr. Art Hansen, professor emeritus of History and Asian American Studies at Cal State, Fullerton. “New insights are given, deeper understanding is obtained, new and old places in the heart are visited. Blessings are received and healing takes place.”

At the conclusion of the memorial service, many of the pilgrims returned to their buses for the long ride back home. Many others stayed to visit the site’s Interpretive Center or continued on to nearby Lone Pine, where the Manzanar at Dusk program was held at a local high school. This event, highlighted by small group discussions led by former Manzanar internees, brings the greater political and sociological themes of internment into focus while making the experience more accessible to younger generations that did not experience internment firsthand.

It is the juxtapositions the pilgrimage inspires—the elderly and the young, history and culture, sorrow and celebration—that is at the heart of the Manzanar journey. Perhaps it is the complexity of the event, emotionally and spiritually, that brings so many people back every year.

For more information on the Manzanar National Historic Site or the pilgrimage, contact the Manzanar Committee at (323) 662-5102 or visit www.manzanarcommittee.org.

Here is a link to the actual article online.

The Map to Manzanar

Here is a Google map of the road to Manzanar to give you an idea of what the pilgrimage looks like. Included are descriptions of all the spots along the way, including the Manzanar at Dusk after-program.


View Larger Map

In Their Words

The only way to truly live this pilgrimage is through the perspectives of the pilgrims themselves. Here is a collection of quotes from some of the formerly interned pilgrims and others that I spoke to along the journey:


“My first trip really changed my life.”
--Sachiko Takita-Ishi, visiting sociology professor Stanford University


“It’s a great honor to be here. I think we’re all here for a good reason. To pay tribute to the courage and the sacrifices of the Japanese American community. In the Forties, they had to pay a price to ensure that the Civil Liberties of ALL Americans were protected. We owe them so much, we owe them a great debt and we’re all here to pay that tribute to them. But we’re also here to remember the sad and dark chapter in American history. A chapter that many have tried to erase, to make us forget, to make it seem like it didn’t happen. I think by being here, by remembering it, our goal is not to dwell on the past, but rather to make sure that it never happens again.”
--Hussan Ayloush, executive director of the Southern California Council on American Islamic Relations

“Had it not been for the Manzanar Committee, the Manzanar pilgrimage, and their moving spirit, Sue Kunitomi Embrey, the Redress Movement, though it no doubt would have materialized, it almost certainly would have been substantially delayed and have showed a quite different coloration and character.”

“A pilgrimage is not a vacation. It is a transformational journey during which significant changes take place. New insights are given, deeper understanding is obtained, new and old places in the heart are visited. Blessings are received and healing takes place.”
--Keynote speaker Dr. Art Hansen, professor of Asian American Studies California State University, Fullerton

“For us, coming out here, it energizes us because we see how wrong it is. Even now, the fight continues.”
--Mickie Okamoto, president UCLA Nikkei Student Union

“We all may think the same and see the same, but we’re all going to leave here with different things: different thoughts, different experiences, different ways to continue the legacy.”
--Stacy Iwata, president UCSD Nikkei Student Union

“The pilgrimage itself allows you to explore something else. In the beginning, it wasn’t about demanding restitution. It always focused on the need to defend the constitution. Now more than ever, we’re seeing an attack on the fundamental aspects of the constitution. If we don’t stand up…make the case why this shouldn’t happen to any group. We’re the best equipped to do so. This community has the moral authority and the responsibility to stand up.”
--Bruce Embrey, Manzanar Committee member

“To walk through here, all of these thoughts come to your mind. Stream-of-consciousness some people would call it. But how come it’s so goddamn different from what you normally think about? The spirits are talking to you. That’s the way I interpret it. It’s a way of getting back in touch with our ancestors. My mother suffered real bad because of camp and I’m pissed off about that. I’m angry. Fuck all that forgive and forget. My thing is you have to fight to make sure it doesn’t happen. We are not going to forget.”
--Community activist Mo Nishida, former Granada internee

Manzanar Photo Gallery

Here is a link to a Flickr photo gallery of shots I took along the pilgrimage. They begin at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo and go all the way through Mojave into the camp and into Lone Pine for the Manzanar at Dusk program.

My Manzanar Pilgrimage

This is a piece that exemplifies the way the Manzanar journey effected me as a 21-year-old on his first trip to the former internment. As a 3rd generation Japanese American (sansei), the trip was a profound one. But I found myself feeling uneasy about my role in the pilgrimage. I got to take an air conditioned bus to the camp, was never forced to leave my home and have to uproot my family and leave my friends. I didn't have to live in these internment camps and it would be impossible for me to even imagine what that must have been like. I decided to interview my Uncle Ben, who along with my mother was interned at the camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. He was 9 at the time but still remembers much about growing up there.

The following is written like a journal. I didn't keep a journal but I wrote this shortly after the journey. Interviews with my uncle are interspersed throughout in italics.


A PILGRIM'S PERSPECTIVE

Monday morning 5:30 a.m.

It was hard waking up at first.

The light of dawn was harsh and my bed was so soft and warm. I had gotten to sleep maybe two hours before, so my first thought upon waking was, “Why? Why am I awake? Where am I?”

My eyes drifted back towards sleep.

But then I remembered. It was the day of the Manzanar Pilgrimage, a journey I had been looking forward to all week and the main reason why I had trouble sleeping the night before. The bus would leave at seven and if I wasn’t on it, I’d have to drive to the Owens Valley by myself, up the 14 until it became the 395 to Yosemite, to Reno, until it became nothing but desert and honest-to-god tumbleweeds on all sides.

Damn, I thought. That would be a hell of a ride. So I showered, dressed and caffeinated myself and got to JANM 10 minutes early.

Everyone was wearing backpacks, boots and hats; the few stragglers were late because they were busy loading up on bottled water from the nearest gas station. They all looked like hikers, not pilgrims. Then again, I was in an Oakland A’s T-shirt.

I must have looked bewildered because as we boarded the bus, a woman said to me, “looks like we’re all going camping, huh?”

I smiled and nodded in agreement.
---
To me, it felt like a kind of a campout adventure. I was only nine when we left for camp. It was just another day to me.

We went to a relocation camp in Portland first. We were from Yakima valley [in Washington] and there were about 1000 of us and that’s where we were first assembled. It was just after high school had gotten out so it must have been June. Yes, around that time. In late September, we got on a train and they sent us to Heart Mountain. Just packed up and went.
---
Pilgrimage. As I took my seat, I thought about the word itself. It seemed fitting to call this trip a pilgrimage. After all, we were traveling a long distance and our destination was a sacred one. Not in any religious sense. But it was a place of significance, a place where history lived in the dirt and the rocks and the wind that rolled down the Sierra Nevadas. The former internees said that the wind was constant; whatever the season, the wind never stopped blowing.

As the bus moved forward and the pilgrims started to wake and converse, I looked out the window, excited more than anything to feel that eternal wind of Manzanar.
---
That first month it was colder than heck. I don’t think the guards were even in the gun tower it was so cold.

It was getting cold on the way there, too. We took a train [to Heart Mountain] and we were moving most of the time. The trip took about three days so every now and then the train would stop. We stopped at one point in Mizzoula, Montana, where my dad was interned. He wasn’t a legal immigrant and they arrested him within a week of Pearl Harbor. They held him in a county jail in Yakima and eventually they relocated him to Mizzoula. So when we went over from Portland, my dad came down to the train depot and we saw him for the first time since he was taken away. It had been about six months. He came on board the train and we had a quick reunion. It wasn’t long but it was wonderful. He joined us at camp later in October or early November of that year and so we were a family again.

When we first got there it was like a prison. But after three or four months, the guards in the tower were gone.
---
Everyone was awake now. A chipper middle-aged couple bantered with the two first-timers sitting behind them; towards the back of the bus, a friendly former internee was discussing the history of Bainbridge Island, WA with a young woman, who listened to him intently. Much to everyone’s delight, someone passed around a tin of Royal Dansk for breakfast.

“I love the smell of butter cookies in the morning,” cooed an elderly woman at the front of the bus.

My colleague Mario told me that if I planned on interviewing anybody on the bus, it would have to be on the ride there. We weren’t due back in Los Angeles until after midnight and everyone would be passed out on the return trip. It was now or never.

I struck up a conversation with a blithe Japanese woman sitting behind me, trying to keep it as casual as possible despite the voice recorder I had in my hand and the obvious cowlick on my head, which I would discover later.

Her name was Sachiko. She was a visiting sociologist scholar at Stanford University currently on sabbatical from a university in Japan. Sachiko was on the bus for her second Manzanar pilgrimage. The first one, she said, was “life transforming.”

That trip was in 1992 near the end of her graduate work at UCLA. One day, as she was trying to figure out what to do with her life once school ended, she visited an exhibit on Manzanar by master photographer Ansel Adams at one of the art galleries on campus. She was surprised to see that the room was empty, save for a lone woman staring deeply into a vivid black-and-white photograph of one of the barracks that housed the internees. Sachiko walked through the entire exhibit, eventually coming to that picture and the woman gazing into it.

“She just stood in front of the barrack picture and said, ‘I was here.’ And I was just stunned. I knew about Japanese internment because I’m a sociologist and I studied it. I knew the history and the politics but it was all academic. But at that moment, I felt that the person and the history were connected.”

So she booked a spot on the bus to Manzanar for the 50th Anniversary of E.O. 9066. The man seated next to her was very knowledgeable about life at camp and they spent the entire ride over discussing the history of the camp. Near the end of the trip, he gave her a copy of a book he wrote on the subject. The title of the book was “Repairing America.” The man’s name was William Hohri.

She had been sitting next to one of the foremost leaders in the Japanese American redress movement.

“After my first pilgrimage, I said, ‘What is this? What is this experience I went through?’ I was so close to this history. Even though I’m from Japan, I felt it was something I really got to know.”

But soon after she got back from the pilgrimage, Sachiko’s newfound perspective was shattered. Three days later, the L.A. riots broke out. She remembers getting on a bus in Westwood and having an old white woman sit down next to her and say to nobody in particular, “I hope the Nazis would come back and kill these people.”

After getting so close to the consequences of racism in Manzanar, the proximity of the race riots—protests she prefers to call them—was too much. All Sachiko could think was what’s happening to us?
---
“Even now the fight continues.”
- Mickie Okamoto, president UCLA Nikkei Student Union, during her address at this year’s pilgrimage.
---
Around 10 a.m. we stopped in Mojave, 95 miles east of Los Angeles. Everyone spilled in to the local Denny’s to relieve nature and I went down the street to the McDonald’s for an iced coffee. As I walked down a dusty path behind the Motel 6, I could only think about Sachiko’s story. What will this pilgrimage mean to me? How much had really changed in 65 years?

In 15 minutes, we were all back on the bus; a minute later it was in motion.
---
I don’t remember a single moment—I was young—but my perspective changed gradually. In the barracks, I remember we were leaving. We were one of the last people to go home and sometimes, I remember throwing coal through the boiler room window. I guess that was like saying goodbye, saying ‘to hell with this place.’

I’m not sure you can ever be conscious of a change of perspective. I think that comes later.

“You have to fight to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” said Mo Nishida, a longtime community figure and former Granada internee. “We are not going to forget.”
---
It was a surreal scene.

We were inside the Manzanar cemetery in front of the iconic alabaster monument. The snow-capped Sierras towered over us in the distance. A Shinto priest was blessing a gravesite in full regalia, surrounded on all sides by pilgrims and their cameras. Behind them, were a handful of film crews, taking B-roll of the burial rite.

It was the contrasts that seemed odd: the religious and secular, old history being documented anew, spirituality meshed with technology.

After the ceremony, I explored the cemetery. Standing before those gravesites, I felt an odd sort of gravity, as if my head and my feet were being pulled towards my chest. The force of the moment was incredible.

When I caught up with Mo later, he had an idea as to what I felt.

“To walk through here, all of these thoughts come to your mind,” he said. Stream-of-consciousness some people would say. But how come it’s so different from what you normally think about? The spirits are talking to you. It’s a way of getting back in touch with our ancestors.”
---
What did this pilgrimage mean to me?
In a lot of ways, it’s better to write about it in terms of stories. In the end, that’s what history is.

Most of my trip was too intense for words, too impossible to convey completely on paper. On my return home, it wasn’t my own thoughts that played back through my mind, but the words of the internees with whom I had spoken throughout the trip.

I’m pissed. I don’t believe in forgive and forget.

We are about reclaiming our identity and reclaiming our own history.

Life can be bittersweet. But as time goes by, life can have a sweet aftertaste.

I believe in equality. Peace with justice.

Shikata ga nai

I could never truly understand what they went through in camp. I never lived it. I understand now that my journey was not my own. It was their perspective I lived through.

And it was unforgettable.