Online Exhibit: Manzanar National Historic Site

Manzanar, in California's Owens Valley at the foot of the Sierra Nevada, was one of ten camps where the U.S. government incarcerated people of Japanese ancestry during World War II, two-thirds of them U.S. citizens. Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, led to the forced removal of more than 120,000 people from their homes on the West Coast. Manzanar opened in March 1942 and at its peak held about 10,000 people in crowded barracks surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. It closed on November 21, 1945. In 1983 a federal commission found that the incarceration was the result of "race prejudice, war hysteria, and failure of political leadership", which led to a formal government apology in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Today Manzanar National Historic Site preserves the camp's landscape, cemetery monument and reconstructed barracks.

More about Manzanar National Historic Site