Managing Manzanar

Managing Manzanar. . , After President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the US Army to remove Japanese Americans from their West Coast homes, he created the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to "provide for their needs in such manner as may be appropriate, and supervise their activities." As a new civilian agency, the WRA scrambled to meet that complex mission at 10 sites around the country, incarcerating more than 120,000 people. , , That mission was further complicated at Manzanar because the War Department's Wartime Civilian Control Administration (WCCA) had built and run the incarceration camp from March 21, 1942, until the WRA took over on June 1, 1942. The army's military-style plans did not consider the needs of a population diverse in age, health, or other attributes. , , As thousands of people arrived that spring, the WCCA tried to organize and provide for their needs. But much of that early work was done by the Japanese Americans themselves, trying to improve the daunting conditions they faced. , , The change of management and personnel on June 1 added another twist to the unsettled atmosphere of that first year. Japanese Americans had not been paid by the WCCA, and they wearied of broken promises. The unjustly incarcerated people differed in approaches toward handling this drastic change in their lives, and differed in their relationships with WRA staff. , , As time went on, living conditions slowly improved. But the "grave injustice" done to Japanese Americans under a false pretense of military necessity caused trauma that has reverberated down through generations. , , Lives Intersecting in Manzanar , Hundreds of WRA employees - almost all of them white - lived and worked within the same barbed wire fence that unconstitutionally incarcerated 11,070 Japanese Americans. , , As the two groups crossed paths in this area, it was impossible to deny the stark differences in the wartime realities between the Japanese Americans and the WRA employees. , , Japanese Americans lived in tarpaper barracks that stretched across the square-mile site. They were here against their will, forced from their homes by the US Army. Most had lost their property and nearly all their belongings. Yet every day many of them walked to this area to work in the administration offices, the motor pool, garment factory, shoyu plant, or other buildings. Some, like Esther Ando, worked in the WRA employees' homes. , , Crossing in the other direction, WRA employees left their dormitories or apartments - complete with bathrooms and kitchens - to oversee work crews, student teachers, and other Japanese American workers. The WRA employees chose to work and live at Manzanar and were paid far more for their efforts than their Japanese American co-workers received. , , Plumber Donald Branson, who earned about $180 a month to supervise a crew of Japanese Americans, recalled: "They received a very small amount, around $15 a month or something." , , Arthur Williams, whose family lived in WRA staff housing, fondly remembered Esther Ando. "She did the laundry," he recalled. "In the summertime she would fix us lunch and do whatever cleaning there was to be done and took care of Tom. My mother prepared dinners for us, so Esther went home at night and had dinner with her family." , , "The Congress recognizes that...a grave injustice was done to both citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry by the evacuation, relocation, and internment of civilians during World War II." , - US Civil Liberties Act, August 10, 1988