Manzanar Site

Re “Whitewashing Manzanar,” by Robert A. Jones, April 10:

This site was not a prison camp. It was a war relocation center. Under the War Relocation Authority, the people were allowed to leave the centers if they had a job offer and vowed loyalty to the United States. About 35,000 did leave to live in the Midwest, and another 4,000 went to college.

You also incorrectly refer to the center as an “internment camp.” The War Relocation Authority’s first quarterly report in 1942 stated: “A sharp distinction should be drawn at all times between residents of relocation centers ... and civilian internees. ... Internees are aliens of enemy nationality, Japanese, German, or Italian ... confined in (Army-operated Department of Justice) internment camps ... and not quartered at relocation centers.”

The “clean history crowd” only wants the truth to be known. The planned multicultural center is much needed for Owens Valley--but the relocation camp section is not being presented truthfully.

Citizens of Owens Valley that witnessed this part of history tell a much different story. The Japanese were allowed to: shop in local stores, many without a guard; hike the Sierra west of Independence to fish the lakes; concerts and fairs were presented; and fresh fruits and vegetables raised by the residents were sold to the public at the camp.

HELEN HOFFMAN

Lone Pine

* What a pathetic person--Lillian Baker--to devote years in fabricating lies about we Americans who were incarcerated in Manzanar (April 4).

We were there of “our own free will”? With searchlights going around at night and a head count made every night by flashlight in each barrack after we retired? And pertaining to the barbed wires surrounding the camp, they were there “to keep cattle out”? What cattle? Never saw any. Also that the sentry towers were “fire watchtowers” ... with machine guns?

Did these people making such absurd statements live in Manzanar and suffer the inequities that we underwent?

TAKAI SAKAI WOO