THREE LENSES: THREE LENSES TEAM ASSISTS IN FUNDRAISING FOR BLOCK 14
This is a short video our team created to help Friends of Manzanar raise funds for the rebuilding of Block 14 at the Manzanar National Historic Site.
When completed, Block 14, a $1 million preservation project, will be comprised of several structures replicating a typical “block” and will include one barracks representing the camp as it appeared when the Issei and Nisei first arrived and another that is typical of how living quarters appeared after internees began to adapt and improve their surroundings.
Friends of Manzanar is a volunteer organization comprised of men and women committed to educating others about the World War II experience of Japanese Americans. After the outbreak of the war,120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American citizens, were confined in America’s concentration camps. Manzanar, located in California between the towns of Independence and Lone Pine, was one of ten such camps.
SCALIA MAKES THE CASE FOR A POSSIBLE REPEAT OF INTERNMENT
Early on, there was never any question in our mind that Internment camps, mass incarceration and the wholesale violation of the rights of a segment of the American population was safely and securely entombed in our nation’s past. That such an injustice as the one that was committed against Japanese Citizens during WWII could not happen again. Imagine our disappointment to hear from one as creditable as Associate Justice of the US Supreme Court, Antonin Scalia, that this might not be so.
In a speech to law students earlier this year, Justice Scalia noted that “in times of war the laws fall silent.” Continuing on, the Associate Justice chided those who would disagree with him stating we are “kidding ourselves if we think it (internment) will not happen again”.
COLOR IMAGES OF INTERNMENT
To date, most of the images our team has discovered of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II have been in Black & White. That is until now.
During WWII, Hollywood CA resident, Bill Manbo and his extended family were interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Park County, WY.
It was there that Mr. Mambo created a series of photographic images using the then new Kodachrome film stock. It is a healthy selection of these images that form the basis of the recent book by University of North Carolina professor, Eric L. Muller, “Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II.”
Read More about Colors of Confinement.
Purchase Colors of Confinement from Amazon.
Manzanar Committee Calls On Inyo County To Protect Owens Valley In Perpetuity From Large-Scale Solar Energy Development
On July 8, 2014, the Manzanar Committee submitted its official comments to the Inyo County Planning Department and Board of Supervisors in response to their Notice of Preparation for the Program Environmental Impact Report for their 2013 Renewable Energy General Plan Amendment (REGPA).
In their initial draft of this amendment, the County would have opened the Owens Valley, from Independence south to Lone Pine, east of U.S. Highway 395, to large-scale renewable energy facilities that would intrude upon the viewshed of the Manzanar National Historic Site.