Manzanar is most widely known as the site of one of ten camps where over 110,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II. Most who were moved to these camps were American citizens. Some families had been in the U.S. for several generations.

Manzanar is located at the foot of the Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley between the towns of Lone Pine and Independence. It is 230 miles north of Los Angeles and less than 100 miles from Death Valley on a barren windy slope with nasty cold winter winds and miserable hot dry summer dust storms.

It's now a National Historic Site. While there are many shocking truths about the site told at the visitor center, there still seems to be some reluctance for the government to call it what it was and to admit what fear caused us to do to loyal citizens. The welcome sign identifies Manzanar as a "relocation" site. It was a prison.

At the onset of WWII, Japanese Americans across the U.S. were given two weeks to dispose of all their property and report with whatever could be carried in a suitcase. They would remain at these sites from 1942-1945.