Manzanar Relocation Center

Ten thousand people were held here at any one time, behind barbed wire and guard towers, the majority of them American citizens, under an executive order signed on 19 February 1942. The wording on this marker took a year to win. The Manzanar Committee held out for hysteria, racism and economic exploitation, and for the words concentration camp, against the state's objections, and the language survived intact. The plaque was fitted into the stone guardhouse in 1973 by Ryozo Kado, the mason who built it.

What the plaque says

In the early part of World War II, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned in relocation centers by Executive Order No. 9066 issued February 19, 1942. Manzanar, the first of ten such concentration camps, was bounded by barbed wire and guard towers. It confined ten thousand persons, the majority of them American citizens. May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism, and economic exploitation never emerge again.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Manzanar National Historic Site — 0.6 mi
  A concentration camp on twice-taken ground, where the United States imprisoned more than eleven thousand of its own.
• Alabama Hills — 11 mi
  Rounded golden granite under the Sierra wall, and Hollywoods oldest outdoor set.
• Mount Whitney — 13 mi
  At 14,505 feet, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, eighty miles from the lowest point.
• Owens Lake — 25 mi
  Patsiata, the lake Los Angeles drank, and the most expensive dust in America.

More markers nearby

• Mary Austin's Home — 6.1 mi
• Site of Putnam's Cabin — 6.1 mi
• Site of Bend City — 6.5 mi
• Camp Independence (Fort) — 8.6 mi