Interweaving Living Stories and the Unburied Past: Community Archeology at Manzanar National Historic Site

Manzanar War Relocation Center was one of ten camps where the US government forcibly relocated people of Japanese descent during World War II. At its peak, Manzanar imprisoned more than 10,000 Japanese Americans of all genders and generations. Although in operation for only a few years, the stories entrenched in the camp’s landscape through cultural materials are profuse, and more and more come into detail with each archeological project undertaken at the site.

Manzanar’s Community Archeology Program has worked since 2003 to document and restore features within the Manzanar National Historic Site. The Program encourages participation regardless of age or experience and provides an opportunity for volunteers to practice citizen science, learn about the general history of Manzanar and the incarceration camps, and interact with personal stories of some of those who were impacted by Manzanar. In 2021, the Program received the Award for Excellence in Public Archeology Programming from the Society of American Archaeology.

Past projects at Chicken Ranch, Block 15 ornamental gardens, and Arai Family Fish Pond testify to the ingenuity of incarcerees who through reuse, collaboration, and determination made life for their entire community more comfortable. By recruiting families, students, service groups, and people who were incarcerated at Manzanar and their descendants, community archeology at Manzanar transforms service into stories that will never be forgotten.

Interior of chicken coop. Ansel Adams photograph, Martha Shoaf Collection, Manzanar NHS.

Messages From Chicken Ranch

Between 2009 and 2018, over a hundred volunteers spent 210 person-days conducting archeological and restoration work at Chicken Ranch, one of the facilities funded at Manzanar by the US government to maximize the camp’s self-sufficiency. Chicken Ranch comprised 15 buildings, including six coops for hens and eight brooder houses, each of which could house 500 baby chicks. In 1943 and 1944, 20 to 28 men were on the Chicken Ranch payroll. Incarcerees were not forced or paid a substantial amount to work, but the labor offered a diversion from otherwise uncertain circumstances. Chicken Ranch workers gathered eggs, planted lawns around the buildings, and cleaned the property, which lay outside of the barbed-wire fence encircling the main camp.

Most of the remains of Chicken Ranch are structural, outlining the locations of the processing plant, chicken coops, rock walkways, the nearest guard tower, and a fireplace for preparing chickens for consumption. Volunteers’ brush clearing revealed artifacts like chicken wire, a metal spoon, two “7-Up” soda bottle fragments, and 61 small, burned animal bone fragments in the fireplace. Of great note are a total of 33 inscriptions written in wet concrete during the ranch’s construction.

At the time, these both English and Japanese messages were meant to be quickly seen only by other incarcerees. Now they are treasured by archeologists and incarcerees’ descendants for the personal insight they provide. Some express unhappiness and resentment; others put forth jokes and good humor. One pro-Japan statement, written on the floor of a coop, urges “Beat America.” Names of employees like Seishi Kimura, David Uchida, and Shizuo Yasui also appear among the inscriptions.

“Beat America” inscription. NPS photo.

Informal graffiti tells of incarcerees’ determination to speak their minds, even when doing so constituted resistance. Their self-expression is now well-displayed due to volunteers’ concerted efforts to rehabilitate Chicken Ranch from a littered and overgrown place to one of the most visible and visitable elements of Manzanar National Historic Site.

Excavation of Block 15 Barracks 5 pond. NPS photo.

The Beauty That Remains

At least a dozen incarcaree-built ornamental ponds have been discovered at Manzanar. These were the fruits of community efforts, much like how excavating and stabilizing them has been the product of years of community archeology.

Archeological excavations in 2010 encountered two pond gardens and 4,000 related artifacts in the residential area of Block 15 at Manzanar. Twenty-two volunteers helped remove dead limbs and brush, conduct photography, and clean and catalogue artifacts.

One of these gardens, attributed to the Nakata family living in Block 15 Barracks 5 Apartment 2, earned third place in the Manzanar Free Press’s best pond contest. The large, scallop-edged concrete pond with an island surpassed archeologists’ expectations of a small barracks garden. Surface-level artifacts included a horseshoe with a wire as if for hanging, perhaps by an incarceree for good luck or decoration. The upper pond fill yielded domestic artifacts like pieces of tinfoil, a table knife, and a lightbulb glass fragment. They were likely lost or discarded by incarcerees before they departed Manzanar for good.

The lower pond fill yielded food remains such as nine complete peach pits, an eggshell, and 232 fish bones, constituting over 11 species of salt-water fish. The mess hall provided meals to incarcerees but likely lacked in quality and variety, so these artifacts point to home-cooking instead. Home-cooking, although discouraged, relieved the monotony of the mess hall and reinforced family ties. Additionally, purchasing foodstuff was one way that incarcerees could assert their cultural identity. Incarcerees could select from mail-order catalogues and patronize co-operative stores, like a fish market in Block 8, that sold shoes, beer, and other goods not distributed by the US government.

Gardens functioned not just to entertain their builders but to strengthen community relationships. For the organizers of Manzanar Free Press’s contest, garden-building also publicized incarcerees’ love of nature to present them as nonthreatening and mitigate racial hostility. For garden-building teams, which typically consisted of older adults—often neighbors—of different geographic origins and pre-war professions, their creations beautified public spaces for all to enjoy.

Historic photograph of Block 15 garden, near Barracks 7. Manzanar NHS.

The pond at Block 15 Barracks 7 Apartments 2 and 3, credited to Roy Sugiwara and Keichiro Muto, accomplished that vision. Historic photographs of the pond feature two stone lanterns—rare, overt Japanese elements at Manzanar. Their remains were found pushed into the former pond along with debris of a bridge. Fifty of the concrete slab fragments that surrounded the pond as steppingstones were found in place.

A collection of marbles from Block 17 Barracks 7. NPS photo.

A high number of recovered marbles suggests children from many barracks were comfortable playing there—and that their guardians knew they would be safe there.

An Independence Dairy bottle recovered from Arai Pond. NPS photo.

Leading With a Chorus of Voices

Oral histories are essential to prompting deeper archeological understandings of life at Manzanar. Few of the estimated 100 ornamental garden ponds that existed appear in publicized photographs, but more evidence of incarcerees’ ingenuity emerges from personal memories.

In a 2006 oral history interview, Madelon Arai Yamamoto mentioned her father, Hanshiro (Jack) Arai, had constructed a fish pond populated with koi, perch, and minnows. Mrs. Yamamoto’s description directed archeologists to the area between Block 33 Barracks 3 and 4, where brush, leaf litter, and fallen tree limbs obscured the surface. Staff, students, and other volunteers, including Mrs. Yamamoto herself, eventually unburied the site in 2011.

Relatives recall Mr. Arai grew chrysanthemums and vegetables like green onions and cucumbers, which the family shared with neighbors, in a small garden next to the pond. In addition to its colorful fish, the pond attracted visitors because of its water lilies. Remnants of their holders, made from recycled fruit slat boxes, were identified by Mrs. Yamamoto. Volunteers also found remnants of the rock-bordered concrete channel Mr. Arai used to fill the pond with water. From the narrow channel water would have flowed over a small waterfall, then into a small pool before dropping to the pond. Mrs. Yamamoto also made out evidence of a tunnel near the pond’s inlet, which her father designed to give the fish a place to hide.

Madelon Yamamoto with much of the Arai Pond excavation crew. NPS photo.

Among the domestic artifacts found at the Arai Pond site were coffee jar fragments, five abalone shell halves, and a porcelain rice bowl fragment decorated with a Japanese kanji character. An astonishing total of 323 marbles, plus checker pieces, rubber balls, and a glass train locomotive candy container, indicate a strong children’s presence by the pond. A 4-inch-long baby spoon is another reminder that even incarcerees as young as two years old were imprisoned at Manzanar.

Incarcerees’ resourcefulness extends deeper below ground as well. It is estimated that there were well over 100 basements dug under barracks by incarcerees, even though they were not approved by the camp’s administration. Basements enabled some privacy, kept incarcerees cool in the summer, and served as important social spaces for playing cards, talking, and illicit activities like gambling. An oral history with Roy Higa in 2012 led to archeologists and volunteers—including Roy’s son, Mitch Higa—uncovering Roy’s basement at Block 14 in 2015. Four chairs placed afterward inside the space pay homage to Roy and his friends playing pinochle in secret.

A group of archeologists and volunteers unburying Roy Higa’s basement in 2015. Mitch Higa, Roy’s son, is on the far right. NPS photo.

Updates to Manzanar National Historic Site continue to reflect the breadth of descendant voices. In response to requests from the adult children of Manzanar’s administrative staff, archeological work has also been conducted in the administration area to illustrate the similarities and differences between the staff housing and incarceree barracks. In the early months of 2024, volunteers began clearing tumbleweed from the area that used to be a baseball field for incarcerees, in the hopes that the sport will return to Manzanar.

Addressing Shared Regrets

Manzanar War Relocation Center is a blight in the United States’ history, which is all the more reason it must be preserved for the future, not relegated to the past.

Some proponents of Japanese American incarceration during World War II claimed there were never guard towers or barbed-wire fences at Manzanar and that incarcerees were spared from rationing and shortages. Another prevailing belief was that Japanese American prisoners were compliant and/or patriotic, which downplayed the bleak conditions of incarceration. Putting community archeology and archeological research in conversation with archival and oral history records combats these harmful assertions and makes room in the narrative for previously silenced voices.

For incarcerees and their descendants, community archeology offers a healing opportunity. Those who were imprisoned at Manzanar lost homes, businesses, and lives, sacrifices of which archeology conveys just a fraction. Yet the archeological record holds strongly to incarcerees’ hope and pride in their heritage in spite of persecution.

Community archeology at Manzanar continues to ensure that the stories of incarcerees are not only preserved but reinvigorated as a living testament to their confinement and the light they cultivated in dark times.

A baseball game at Manzanar War Relocation Center. Ansel Adams photograph, Manzanar NHS.

Resources

A Place of Beauty and Serenity: Excavation and Restoration of the Arai Family Fish Pond, Block 33, Barracks 4, 2014. National Park Service.

Archeological and Preservation Work at the Chicken Ranch 2009-2018, 2019. National Park Service.

“Bringing Dark Times to Light,” 2006. Archaeological Institute of America.

Burton, Jeffery F. “Excavating Legacy: Community Archaeology at Manzanar.” Eastern Sierra History Conference, October 28-30, 2016, Bishop, CA.

Case Study: Oral History Uses in Cultural Resource Management. National Park Service.

I Rei To. Archeological Investigations at the Manzanar Relocation Center Cemetery, 2001, National Park Service.

Ng, Lauren and Stacey Lynn Camp. “Consumption in World War II Japanese American Incarceration Camps.” Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism, edited by Mark Leone and Jocelyn E. Knauf, University of Maryland, College Park, 2015, pp. 149-180.

Three Farewells to Manzanar: The Archeology of Manzanar National Historic Site, 1996. National Park Service.

Uncovering Community: The Archeology of Block 15 Manzanar Relocation Center, 2017. National Park Service.