They called America’s first concentration camp a “Reception Center.”
March 21, 1942: The first group of 82 Japanese American “volunteers” arrived in California’s Owens Valley to help build a temporary “reception center.”
Eighty-two men arrived in the desert to prepare the site. Two days later, 710 more followed.
Many came with optimism, hoping to build a functioning community for themselves. But it didn’t take long to understand what they were actually building: the place that would confine them.
They cleared land, laid out infrastructure, and constructed the barracks that would soon hold thousands. For this work, they were paid a fraction of standard wages.
The government called it a “reception center,” a term that suggested order, safety, and something temporary.
Nothing about what followed resembled a reception, unless it referred to the dust storms, the fences, and the soldiers.
Photo by Clem Albers, Courtesy of the National Archives
March 17, 1942: Construction began at Manzanar. Four days later, 82 Japanese American “volunteers” arrived. They were told they were building a “reception center.”
Photo by Eliot Elisofon
March 21, 1942: The first 82 Japanese American “volunteers” arrive. Two days later, 710 more followed. They would help build what became Manzanar.
AP Photo
What was called a “Reception Center” came with armed guards and guard towers. Manzanar, May 23, 1943
Courtesy of Bettmann Archive
On March 23, 1942, 710 more people arrived at Manzanar. By April, families were arriving by the thousands.
Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration
The man who signed the order called them “concentration camps” himself.
General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command, argued that even one drop of Japanese ancestry was enough. Citizenship didn’t matter.
The Language of Incarceration
Officials avoided terms like “prison” or “concentration camp.” The Wartime Civil Control Administration, part of the Western Defense Command, used language that softened the reality, like evacuation, relocation, and reception.
These words shaped public perception. Forced removal became policy. Incarceration became administration.
But the reality was far different. By April 1942, families were arriving by the thousands, at times up to 1,000 people per day. Manzanar was already functioning as a site of confinement. People were placed in hastily built barracks, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards, under constant surveillance.
After ten weeks, on June 1, 1942, control of the camp was transferred to the War Relocation Authority. It was renamed the “Manzanar War Relocation Center.” The name changed. The reality did not.
Camp Population
Even as people lived there, the camp was still being completed.
About 90 percent of those incarcerated came from the Los Angeles area. Others were sent from Stockton, California, and Bainbridge Island, Washington. Many were farmers and fishermen, removed from their homes and livelihoods.
Manzanar held 10,046 people at its peak. In total, 11,070 passed through the camp. The environment made survival even harder.
Summers in Owens Valley often exceeded 100°F. Winters dropped into the 40s during the day, and far lower at night. Winds were constant. Dust was everywhere.
People woke up covered in it. It filled the barracks, coated their belongings, and settled into every space they tried to make livable.
Photo by Toyo Miyatake
Many at Manzanar were farmers and fishermen. Heihachi Ishikawa somehow kept catching trout in the Owens Valley.
Courtesy of the Japanese American Medical Association
Obo (standing in Boy Scout uniform) and Shiichirō (seated, second from right), together with Chico (not pictured), all died within seven months of each other at Manzanar.
Photo by Dorothea Lange
Dust storm at Manzanar. The climate was harsh. Few were prepared for it.
Photo by Ansel Adams
They called it the Manzanar Free Press. It was published by Japanese Americans imprisoned in a concentration camp.
Photo by Dorothea Lange
Manzanar had a camouflage net factory. Facing similar labor problems as the one in Santa Anita Assembly Center, the factory was short-lived.
Photo by Ansel Adams
Manzanar Children’s Village. 101 Japanese American children were brought here from across the West Coast, nearly half of them separated from their families.
Sketch by Eddy Kurushima.
Military police fire into a crowd of unarmed Japanese American inmates at Manzanar, killing two and injuring at least ten more.
Facilities
Despite the conditions, a functioning community emerged under confinement.
Incarcerated Japanese Americans operated a cooperative store, shops, and a camp newspaper (ironically called the “Manzanar Free Press”). A camouflage net factory supplied materials to the U.S. military. An experimental plantation attempted to produce natural rubber from the guayule plant.
Within the camp, the Manzanar Children’s Village housed 101 orphaned Japanese American children between 1942 and 1945.
At the same time, tensions grew. Manzanar had one of the highest rates of segregation to Tule Lake following unrest, and one of the lowest early volunteer rates for military service among WRA camps. Only 42 men had volunteered for the armed forces before the draft was instituted. (When eighty-two had volunteered to build the camp.)
Closing of Manzanar
As the camp’s closing approached in late 1945, pressure increased to remove the remaining inmates.
With more than 2,000 still at Manzanar in October, director Ralph P. Merritt warned families that departure dates and destinations would be assigned if they did not make their own plans. On November 21, 1945, the last remaining inmates — a mother and her four-year-old son — left the camp at 11 a.m.
Between 135 and 146 Japanese Americans died at Manzanar.
Manzanar was one of the first camps to open. It would not be the last. Nine more WRA camps followed, along with dozens of other detention sites across the country.
The words used in 1942 were not accidental. They were chosen to make something extraordinary seem ordinary.
Today, those words still matter.
Ralph Merritt with his dog on November 21, 1945, the day Manzanar closed and the last incarcerated families prepared to leave.
Courtesy of Gillfoto / Wikimedia Commons
Ireitō at Manzanar. A memorial to those who died here.
Photo by Ansel Adams
“Reception Center.” “War Relocation Center.” Names chosen to make it sound like something else.
Notable Incarcerees
Among the more than 11,000 people incarcerated at Manzanar were artists, activists, and individuals whose lives would later shape American culture and civil rights:
- Pat Morita — later became a Hollywood actor
- Iwao Takamoto — future animator, creator of Scooby-Doo
- Mary Nomura — the “Songbird of Manzanar”
- Chiura Obata — artist and educator
- Toyo Miyatake — unofficial and official camp photographer
- Mary Oda — physician who served the incarcerated community
- Ralph Lazo — voluntarily entered Manzanar
- Sue Kunitomi Embrey — later led efforts to preserve Manzanar
- Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga — uncovered key evidence in redress
- Karl and Elaine Yoneda — civil rights advocates
Have you attempted to compile the names of the men who helped build Manzanar? My mother said my grandfather was one of them: Sadagoro Hoshizaki, an Issei.
That’s a great question. From what we’ve seen, there isn’t a clear list of the men who built places like Manzanar.
Construction was done in phases, some by outside contractors, and later by incarcerated Japanese Americans assigned to work crews. But those assignments weren’t tracked in a way that makes it possible to reconstruct a definitive list, unfortunately.
If we do come across anything, we’ll share it.