Page 152 - WINE DINE AND TRAVEL SPRING 2021 REDISCOVERING CALIFORNIA'S CENTRAL COAST

nese population on the West Coast, and sent over
100,000 of these American citizens of Japanese
ancestry to ten remote internment camps across
the west and beyond. Housing over 11,000 in-
ternees,
Manzanar ranks as one of the largest. Winter
brought frost and snow, summer temperatures
rose in excess of 110 degrees F. Yet, despite terri-
ble odds, these law-abiding Japanese-American
“prisoners” recreated a semblance of normal life,
erecting a school, places of worship, a refectory
hall, and planting Japanese gardens emblematic of
their culture.
The last of eight wooden watchtowers, and a
fence edged in rabbit brush delineate the camp
where the majestic Sierra Nevada serves as a dra-
matic backdrop. We explored the square mile that
is Manzanar on foot, to view reconstructed bar-
racks where families shared a few square feet of
living space, explore traces of an Episcopal church,
a Buddhist temple, and a baseball diamond. Trem-
bling leaves of aspen trees in shades of gold and
rust played over ribbons of dappled shade.
A mere handful of the 504 barracks remain
standing — the schoolroom lined with children’s
artwork, the communal bathrooms and mess hall.
The living arrangements of the families assigned
to share the wooden barracks were rudimentary
at best. As internee survivor Rosie Kakuuchi de-
scribes: “One of the hardest things to endure was
the communal latrines, with no partitions; and
showers with no stalls.”
At the far end of the Manzanar National His-
toric Site, the memorial inscribed with Japanese
lettering stood out like a beacon against the snow-
capped Eastern Sierras. Don’t miss walking
through the museum to view implements created
by these wartime internees, and excerpts from
their journals.
We elected to spend the night four miles up the
road, at the historic Winnedumah Hotel in Inde-
pendence. Built in 1927, and in some disrepair, the
ghost-ridden hallways and creaking floors once
echoed with the footsteps of John Wayne and Bing
Crosby. The hotel sits directly across from the old
courthouse, another frequent movie backdrop,

152 WINE DINE & TRAVEL MAGAZINE 2021