Though known as a dusty desert and a site of injustice for Japanese Americans, filmmaker Ann Kaneko delved into the intricate history of water rights and the people of California’s Owens Valley in “Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust.” The documentary primarily focuses on the Paiute and Shoshone people who have lived in the region, […]
Manzanar’s ‘unexpected’ land defenders
May 13, 2021 by Leave a Comment
Like many Sansei, Ann Kaneko grew up hearing about “camp†from her parents’ dinnertime conversations, but it wasn’t until she was asked to talk about her family’s World War II incarceration in the fourth grade that she realized that what they had experienced was far from a “fun camp where they had been for a […]
Down from mountain, Japanese American incarceree’s remains return home
April 15, 2021 by Leave a Comment
When Giichi Matsumura arrived at his final resting place in December, the people who knew him best already were there. His wife, Ito, who had mourned his passing for 60 years before her death in 2005, was buried in the same plot, as was his daughter, Kazue, who died in 2018. His father, Katsuzo, who […]
eBay auction of Japanese American incarceration art pulled after protest
April 15, 2021 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — The auction of a series of sketches purportedly drawn by an artist at the Japanese American concentration camp at Manzanar was canceled April 6 after groups protested it was offensive and immoral to profit off the misery of incarcerated people. The auction was halted by eBay hours before it was to conclude […]
Hello, ‘Farewell,’ AGAIN: Reflections on reintroducing ‘Farewell to Manzanar’ to the public
February 18, 2021 by Leave a Comment
On March 11, 1976 the world television presentation of “Farewell to Manzanar†was broadcasted to a national audience. Then in February 2001, the film was reintroduced to the public in a number of private screenings to commemorate Day of Remembrance events in California. Now another 20 years later, the film is being presented Feb. 21 […]
Q-and-A with longtime activist and mentor Alan Nishio
May 7, 2020 by Leave a Comment
Editor’s Note: This Q-and-A-format interview was originally posted on the Manzanar Committee’s blog prior to the 2020 virtual Manzanar Pilgrimage. https://manzanarcommittee.org/2020/04/25/nishio-q Alan Nishio, who is the keynote speaker for our 2020 Virtual Manzanar Pilgrimage, was awarded the Manzanar Committee’s 2017 Sue Kunitomi Embrey Award for his leadership during the Redress Movement in the 1980s, along […]
DNA results confirm body found near Manzanar concentration camp site was missing Nikkei
January 2, 2020 by Leave a Comment
INYO COUNTY, Calif. — Remains found Oct. 7, 2019 near the Manzanar concentration camp in California’s Inyo County were determined to be those of Giichi Matsumura, who had gone missing in July of 1945, said a joint news release by the Inyo County Sheriff and the Manzanar Historic Site. On Oct. 7, 2019, two hikers […]
Remains found may be Manzanar inmate
November 7, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Skeletal remains discovered by hikers near Mount Williamson on Oct. 7 could be that of a Manzanar, Calif. concentration camp prisoner who disappeared July 29, 1945, while hiking in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains, the Associated Press reported. In the closing days of World War II, a man from Manzanar had joined other Japanese American […]
Paul Bannai, first Japanese American to serve in California State Legislature, dies at 99
October 24, 2019 by Leave a Comment
Former California State Assemblyman Paul Takeo Bannai, the first Japanese American elected to serve in the California State Legislature, peacefully passed away in Los Angeles, Calif. on Sept. 14, 2019. He was 99. Bannai was born on July 4, 1920, 180 miles northeast of Denver, in Delta, Colo. He grew up in other towns in […]
Annual concentration camp pilgrimage salient to politics 50 years on
May 9, 2019 by Leave a Comment
LOS ANGELES — After being expelled from university for “inciting a riot,†fighting for African Americans’ civil rights and protesting the Vietnam War, Warren Furutani decided it was time to galvanize a Japanese American community which had experienced mass incarceration two decades earlier. Just 22 years old at the time of the first pilgrimage to […]
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