World War II Day by Day

Manzanar, Owens Valley, Inyo County, California • February 27, 1942

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roose­velt signed Exec­u­tive Order 9066. The order empowered the U.S. Army’s recently estab­lished Western Defense Com­mand to desig­nate areas on the Pacific Coast of the United States from which “any and all persons may be excluded” in the inter­ests of national secu­rity. The lan­guage of 9066 was neu­tral as to those poten­tially affected by the order. But in light of the U.S. decla­ra­tion of war against the Empire of Japan 2 months ear­lier it wasn’t hard to guess that Roose­velt’s order chiefly tar­geted per­sons of Japa­nese descent for exclu­sion. Huge swathes of Washing­ton, Oregon, and Arizona, and all Cali­for­nia, collec­tively forming Mili­tary Areas No. 1 and 2, were declared “thea­ters of war” (see map below). In these 4 states lived 75,000 Japa­nese Amer­i­can citi­zens (Nisei and Sansei in Japa­nese) and 45,000 Japa­nese immi­grants (Issei), or nationals, the latter ineli­gi­ble for U.S. citizen­ship on the basis of race. Cali­for­nia alone was home to 94,000 men, women, and chil­dren of Japa­nese ances­try. Starting Febru­ary 2, 1942, Japa­nese nationals were required to regis­ter with the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice’s FBI as “enemy aliens.”

On this date, February 27, 1942, specialists from the U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers out of Los Angeles appeared in Cali­for­nia’s Owens Valley, which lies in the remote, extreme east of the state. They and a smat­tering of locals selected the former town site of Man­za­nar (Spanish for “apple orchard”; again, see map) as the loca­tion of the first “proces­sing center” of people relocated from the U.S. West Coast against their will and with­out due process. Thus, the sleepy aban­doned fruit orchards were trans­formed into an incar­cer­a­tion site for over 10,000 people of Japa­nese eth­nic­ity, becoming the model for 9 succes­sor incar­cer­a­tion sites that spread across the western half of the U.S.

From the start the Army Corps of Engineers, the War Department, and the head of the West­ern Defense Com­mand, 62‑year-old Gen. John L. DeWitt, all con­ceived the Man­za­nar site to be “tem­po­rary housing.” West Coast Japa­nese Amer­i­cans and nationals would be rounded up, deliv­ered to and detained in make­shift assem­bly cen­ters (which Man­za­nar ini­tially was), and then quickly relo­cated east of Mili­tary Areas No. 1 and 2 (with 4 excep­tions it turned out) or east of the Mis­sis­sippi River if states there would accept the evac­uees. The Corps com­pleted the design of the incar­cer­a­tion site in 5 days. Man­za­nar’s resi­den­tial site plan resembled other mili­tary camps the Corps had designed for young, healthy service­members: in this in­stance, 36 blocks of black tarpaper-covered wooden barracks laid out in 2 columns of 8 rows each, with com­munal dining halls, showers, and latrine/­laundry facilities in sepa­rate buildings. Construction was budgeted at $5 million.

Initial construction of the Owens Valley Reception Center (OVRC) began on March 14, 1942. A week later the first West Coast Japa­nese to be evac­uated arrived. Managing their removal and deliv­ery to Man­za­nar’s OVRC was the respon­si­bility of the War­time Civil Con­trol Admin­is­tra­tion (WCCA), an agency of the Western Defense Com­mand estab­lished 3 days earlier. The men and women of WCCA were mostly drawn from Roose­velt’s Works Pro­ject Admin­is­tra­tion (WPA), which had been in exis­tence since 1935. After June 1, 1942, respon­si­bility for admin­is­tra­ting OVRC was trans­ferred to the new War Relo­ca­tion Author­ity (WRA), a U.S. civil­ian agency, and the Man­za­nar site renamed Manza­nar War Relo­ca­tion Cen­ter (MWRC). As time went on the WRA on-site staff numbered up to 229, of which 20 were WCCA holdovers.

The Manzanar incarceration site covered approx­i­mately 540 acres/220 hect­ares. Eight guard towers manned by mili­tary police were located at inter­vals around the 5 foot/­1.5 meter, 5‑strand‑high barbed wire peri­meter fence. The resi­den­tial area was about 1 square mile/­2.6 square kilo­meters and con­sisted of a grid of 36 iden­ti­cal, hastily con­structed blocks of 13 20‑by‑100‑foot/­6.1‑by‑30‑meter‑long tar­paper-covered wooden resi­den­tial bar­racks, with each family (up to 6 members, down from 8) squeezed into 1 of 4 tiny 20‑by‑25‑foot/­6.1‑by‑7.6‑meter primi­tive “apart­ments” lit by a single light bulb and heated by an oil-burning stove. Uprooted from their West Coast homes, neighbor­hoods, farms, and sites of employ­ment, wor­ship, and learning sup­posedly for a limited dura­tion, U.S. resi­dents of Japa­nese heri­tage were forced to live out World War II in remote and unfamiliar places.

Manzanar War Relocation Center for West Coast Residents of Japanese Ancestry, 1942–1945

Above: Map showing (a) the massive World War II exclusion area (Mili­tary Areas 1 and 2) and (b) sites of involuntary con­fine­ment in the conti­nen­tal U.S. for over 120,000 Japa­nese nationals (“alien enemies”) and Japa­nese Amer­i­can citizens (labeled “non-alien enemies”) who resided in 4 Western states as well as for over 31,000 sus­pected enemy nationals and their fami­lies interned under the Enemy Alien Con­trol Pro­gram. The 10 hastily built confine­ment sites, euphe­mis­tically called “relo­ca­tion centers,” are iden­ti­fied by black tri­angles. The sites were located in 7 states all west of the Mis­sis­sippi River and cost the govern­ment $40 mil­lion annually to oper­ate. All relo­ca­tion centers were built in out-of-the-way places, many in deso­late high deserts or swamp land. Iden­ti­fied by stars are facil­i­ties admin­is­tered by the U.S. Depart­ment of Justice and the U.S. Army. It was to these often former Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps camps that Japa­nese arrested between Decem­ber 8, 1941, and early 1942 were exiled indef­i­nitely—that is, before Exec­u­tive Order 9066 was in place. Indeed, the full extent of war­time incar­cera­tion includes thou­sands of German and Ital­ian nationals living in the U.S. or deported from Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, plus forcibly relo­cated Alaskan natives, Japa­nese Latin Amer­icans, and some Japa­nese Hawai­ians. These unfor­tunate people, along with Japa­nese nationals and American-born Japanese, were incar­cerated in more than 59 U.S. govern­ment facili­ties. In the map legend WCCA = War­time Civil Con­trol Administration and WRA = War Relocation Authority, successor to WCCA.

Left: Anger over Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, invasion jitters, and race prej­u­dice swept over scared West Coast resi­dents, who largely wanted all Japa­nese descen­dants out of their area as quickly as humanly pos­si­ble. “OUSTER OF ALL JAPS IN CALIFORNIA NEAR!” screams San Fran­cisco Exam­iner head­lines of Japa­nese relo­ca­tion, Febru­ary 27, 1942. On May 21, 1942, the rival and equally hostile San Fran­cisco Chron­icle told its readers: “S.F. Clear of All But 6 Sick Japs. . . . The last group, 274 of them, were moved yes­ter­day.” Photo by Doro­thea Lange. Lange was 1 of 3 photo­graphers in the WRA Photo­graphy Sec­tion, or WRAPS, in 1942–1943. The other 2 were Clem Albers and Francis Stewart. A civil­ian, the photo­grapher Ansel Adams made multi­ple trips to Man­zanar between 1943 and 1944, docu­menting camp life in a less than ideal setting. Toyo Miya­take, a profes­sional photo­grapher before his incar­cer­a­tion in Man­zanar, had the camp director’s permission to also shoot pictures of camp life.

Right: The official notice of exclusion and forcible removal, April 1, 1942. Photo­graph by Dorothea Lange. Per the posted exclu­sion order, all Japa­nese Amer­i­cans living in the first San Fran­cisco sec­tion were directed to evac­u­ate the Pacific Coast en masse, a vio­la­tion of their civil liberties as U.S.‑born citi­zens. Years before the Decem­ber 7, 1941, Japa­nese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the U.S. govern­ment had drafted plans to intern some Japa­nese Amer­icans and Japa­nese nationals (Issei) and had already placed some coastal com­mu­ni­ties under su­rveil­lance. This despite many years’ worth of FBI and naval intel­ligence data that attested to resi­dents of Japa­nese origin posing no national secu­rity threat. The exclu­sion order also swept up Japa­nese Amer­i­can sol­diers who had taken an oath of allegiance to their country of birth.

Left: With luggage tags affixed to their clothing—an aid in keeping family units intact during all phases of their forced removal—members of the Moriji Mochida family await an evac­u­a­tion bus in Hay­ward, Ala­meda County (San Fran­cisco Bay area), Cali­for­nia, May 8, 1942. On the lug­gage tags was written the family’s desig­nated iden­ti­fi­ca­tion num­ber. Mochida’s youngest child was 3. The Mochidas had oper­ated a 2‑acre/­0.8‑hectare nur­sery and 5 green­houses in San Lean­dro, Ala­meda County, before their incarceration. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.

Right: The forced exodus of Japanese in Los Angeles started at the end of March 1942. Staring into uncer­tainty 2‑year-old Yuki Oki­naga Haya­kawa, clutching a tiny purse and an apple with a few bites gone, waits with the family’s allot­ment of bag­gage before leaving a chaotic scene at Los Angeles’s Union Sta­tion. The child and her single mother Mikiko Hayakawa arrived in late March or April 1942, like most Japa­nese Angeleno evac­uees, at Man­za­nar War Relo­ca­tion Cen­ter, more than 200 miles/­322 kilo­meters north of LA in Cali­for­nia’s Owens Valley, which would be their home for the next 3½ years. Each dis­placed family mem­ber was permit­ted to take bedding and linens (no mat­tresses), toilet arti­cles, extra clothing, and “essen­tial per­sonal effects,” nothing more; in other words, only what could be carried. Photograph by Clement “Clem” Albers.

Left: On March 17, 1942, construction began at the Manzanar War Relo­ca­tion Cen­ter site for evac­uees of Japa­nese ancestry in Cali­for­nia’s Owens Valley, flanked by the High Sierras and Mt. William­son. Photo by Clem Albers. Manza­nar was an intern­ment camp built from scratch primar­ily by camp residents. Some 764 tar­paper-covered wooded struc­tures were com­pleted within 3 months by a crew of 600 unskilled men drawn from Southern Cali­for­nia working 10‑hour days, 6 days a week, and rolling out 2 bar­racks an hour. Due to a criti­cal housing short­age in the Owens Valley, WRA staff—nearly 100 em­ployees at the start—and their fami­lies should they be married lived cheek by jowl with camp resi­dents in blocks of highly flam­ma­ble bar­racks until staff housing with indoor plumbing, a 1‑person kitchen, living room, and bath­room could be built during Phase II–IV by Japa­nese crafts­men. The first West Coast Japa­nese arrived on March 21, 5 days after con­struc­tion began. The arrivals ini­ti­ally shel­tered in tents just like out­side con­struc­tion workers and WRA staff did. On April 28 Manza­nar’s Japa­nese popu­la­tion swelled to 7,101. More WRA staff and fami­lies arrived to bring the number of Cau­ca­sians to over 400. A total of 11,070 native-born Japa­nese (most over the age of 50) and Japa­nese Americans (86 per­cent 25 years or younger) were incarcerated at Manzanar without charge.

Right: Barracks under construction. Because the War Depart­ment had no inten­tion of housing resi­dents at Manza­nar at govern­ment expense until the end of the war (when­ever that happened), it had no inter­est in build­ing com­fort­able living quarters for short-term occu­pants. Photo by Clem Albers. Manza­nar incar­cerees—guinea pigs for the next 9 WRA incar­ce­ration camps—were forced to live in flimsy, cramped, and drab “apart­ments” made using green lumber and other low-grade mate­rials. Bar­racks orig­i­nally had no ceiling and no dry­wall on inside walls, elimi­na­ting any chance of privacy. Knot holes that fell out were covered over with tin can lids nailed to the walls and floors. Ship­lap flooring with gaps between boards made it impos­si­ble to keep the per­va­sive dust out of the living quarters until evacuee crafts­men laid a lino­leum-type material over the floor­boards and hung dry­wall on ceilings and walls. Camp resi­dents endured brutally cold winters, scorching summers, and fierce, dusty, and grit-laden ever-present wind.

Left: Underneath the exterior appearance of a prison camp, Manza­nar’s incar­cerees par­ti­cipated in many of the same activi­ties people on the out­sider enjoyed in a typi­cal Amer­i­can setting. Chil­dren went to day care cen­ters while older ones (some 2,700) attended fully accred­ited ele­men­tary, junior high, high school, and junior college, all of which afforded instruc­tion for spe­cial needs stu­dents. Older folks attended adult edu­ca­tion and busi­ness classes. A Chil­dren’s Village (orphan­age) cared for over 100 boys and girls ages 6 months to 17 years. In time, a 250‑bed hospi­tal staffed chiefly by incar­cerees pro­vided the best health­care of any hos­pital within 200 miles/­322 km. Hospital stay: $15 per day. Resi­dents played 9‑hole golf on a dirt course, attended Bud­dhist temples (there were 3), Protes­tant and Catho­lic churches, were served by a Los Angeles-based Bank of America and a branch of the Los Angeles Post Office, read a mostly uncen­sored news­paper (Manza­nar Free Press) written and printed by resi­dents, attended an out­door movie theater, played foot­ball, basket­ball, volleyball, and base­ball as photo­grapher Ansel Adams recorded in 1943, visited newly laid out parks and picnic areas, planted flower and vege­ta­ble gardens, held dances and Boy and Girl Scout troop meetings in their recre­a­tion halls, met each other at the 2 Ys, social, and martial arts clubs, took voca­tional training and dance classes, and patron­ized Manzanar’s barber and beauty shops, shoe repair shops, as well as cooperatives that sold drinks, food, and household supplies.

Right: Forty-five percent of Manzanar’s adults were employed at the camp in a variety of jobs using skills, drive, and a work ethic they either brought with them or they learned there. Jobs included clothing and furni­ture manu­fac­turing, farming and tending orchards, mili­tary manu­fac­turing such as camou­flage netting and exper­i­men­tal rubber from guayule plants, teaching, civil ser­vice jobs such as police, fire fighters, and nursing, and gener­al ser­vice jobs oper­a­ting stores, beauty parlors, and a bank. By the summer of 1943, camp orchards, gardens, and farms were pro­ducing apples, pears, pota­toes, onions, toma­toes, egg­plant, cucum­bers, Chi­nese cab­bage, water­melon, radishes, and peppers. Even­tually, there were more than 400 acres of farms (see above photo­graph by Ansel Adams) pro­ducing more than 80 per­cent of the pro­duce consumed at the camp. Chicken, hog, and cattle raising oper­a­tions began in 1944. Camp employees were paid monthly. Unskilled workers earned $8.00 per month ($149.20 per month in 2024 dollars), semi-skilled workers earned $12 per month ($224 per month in 2024 dollars), skilled workers such as butchers made $16 per month ($298 per month in 2024 dollars), and profes­sionals such as physi­cians, surgeons, and dentists earned an insulting $19 per month ($354 per month in 2024 dollars). Internees’ pay could not exceed the earnings of the lowest paid army recruit. In addition, every­body received $3.60 per month ($67 per month in 2024 dollars) as a clothing allowance.

Injustice Camouflaged as Military Necessity: Japanese American Incarceration During World War II