In August it was announced that Tanforan would shut down in October and its residents would be transported to new relocation camps beginning September 15. These camps—collectively and whimsically dubbed “Shangri-La” by the Tanforan Totalizer—were in Gila River, Arizona; Poston, Arizona; Topaz, Utah; and Manzanar, California. Many Issei, who could not bear hot climates, were convinced they were being sent there to die; rumors spread like measles among the children that they would find rattlesnakes and scorpions curled up in their beds. And some evacuees were simply sad to say goodbye to the little community they had built in the shadow of the grandstand.
The train waiting on the railroad siding that day was an antique that looked as though it had not seen service since World War I. Shades were drawn inside, and in place of electric lights there were gas lamps. Armed soldiers again stood guard at either end of the car. The Watanabes—including Horace and Rose and their sons, Jack and Will—settled in, and though the children were restless at first, the tedium, dim light, and rhythmic motion of the train eventually lulled them to sleep. Ruth found herself dozing too until, after ten hours, the train whistled, slowed, and stopped.
The evacuees stepped into bright sunlight beside a tiny train depot whose sign read, somewhat forlornly, LONE PINE. But it was what loomed behind the depot that commanded their attention: a chain of towering granite mountains, their lower slopes green with the last breath of summer, their jagged summits serrating the blue desert sky. No one getting their first glimpse of the Sierra Nevada could fail to be awed by its beauty and grandeur. But they had little time to appreciate it before guards herded them onto buses.
There were no shades on these windows so Ruth was able to enjoy her first taste of Outside in four months. Lone Pine’s Main Street was populated with storefronts refreshingly familiar in their ordinary, small-town way: Hopkins Hardware, Safeway, Bank of America, Dow Hotel, and Sterling Service Station. A rider on horseback trotted past Buicks and flatbed trucks parked at the curb. A drugstore advertised MALTS and SODAS, and in that moment Ruth would have traded her left kidney for a chocolate milkshake.
And to the east, standing like a Pharos on some inland shore, Mount Whitney rose majestically almost two miles above the desert floor. Ruth pointed it out to Peggy and Donnie, who oohed and aahed at its heights.
But within minutes they had left Lone Pine behind like a mirage of gentler times and were traveling north on U.S. Highway 6.
* * *
The town of Manzanar, Spanish for “apple orchard,” was what much of the surrounding Owens Valley had once been—a thriving community of apple, pear, and peach growers and cattle ranchers—until the city of Los Angeles, rich and thirsty, began guzzling up land and water rights all over the valley. It wasn’t long before the farmers’ irrigation water was being siphoned out of the Owens River via the Los Angeles Aqueduct. Eventually even the groundwater was pumped right out from under those property owners who had not sold out to the rapidly expanding metropolis to the south. By 1935 most of the parched land had reverted to sage-covered desert. Then, after Pearl Harbor, Los Angeles was persuaded to lease six thousand acres of land to the U.S. government, which proceeded to bulldoze the long-abandoned site, stripping away any remaining topsoil and laying the foundation for a new Manzanar.
Manzanar Relocation Center was a sprawling city on the sand that resembled a huge Army base: five hundred wood-and-tar-paper barracks housing some ten thousand displaced Japanese Americans. There were also schools, churches, warehouses, stores, thirty-four mess halls, a fully equipped hospital, libraries, a canteen, fire and police departments, baseball diamonds, and athletic fields. The press liked to say it was “a typical American city,” but this was only true if five-strand barbed-wire fences and guard towers armed with .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns could be considered typical.
The Watanabes’ bus came to a stop just inside the stone entry gate, which was crowned by an odd pagodalike roof. The bus door folded open to admit a gust of hot dry air, like an oven door being opened. But it wasn’t until Ruth disembarked and got a good look at her surroundings that she understood, with a queasy feeling, why the camp had been built here.
A few miles west rose the eastern wall of the Sierra Nevada—its lofty summits more than ten thousand feet tall, Mount Williamson a giant among giants at fourteen thousand feet. The mountains extended as far south and as far north as the eye could see: the rocky spine of California, four hundred miles long, its granite peaks at once breathtaking and forbidding.
Opposite the highway were the rugged brown flanks of the Inyo Mountains, their peaks also thrusting ten thousand feet into the sky, forming a second line of ramparts from north to south. The two mountain ranges seemed to merge into vanishing points at each end of Highway 6, as if pinching off any hope of escape. They were bulwarks, Ruth realized, walling off the evacuees from the rest of the state, which had to be shielded from the likes of her and her family.
“It’s like … God’s own prison,” she said under her breath to Frank.
Frank nodded. “Guess there wasn’t room at the bottom of the ocean.”
Taizo had similar thoughts as he gazed up at the summits: Do the hakujin really fear us this much? Or do they hate us this much?
Etsuko sensed his unease and slipped her hand into his.
“We are together, all else can be endured,” she said.
Guards directed them to the registration office, where a clerk gave out housing assignments. “You’ve come at a good time,” he said. “When the camp first opened there weren’t enough barracks and we were assigning eight or more people per apartment. Now, with new construction almost finished, we can accommodate a family of four to each one. But since there are thirteen in your family…” He asked Ralph, “Mr. Watanabe, you aren’t married?”
Ralph said dryly, “No, thanks for mentioning that, Mom forgot today.”
Etsuko blushed and scolded, “Ryuu!”
“I’m afraid we’re going to have to assign you to the bachelors’ quarters.”
Ruth started to object. “Now, wait—”
“It’s okay, Sis,” Ralph said with equanimity. Then, to the Nisei: “I’ll take the penthouse. With a view of the tumbleweeds if possible.”
The clerk laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.” He found Ralph a suitable spot and gave the family directions to their new living quarters in Block 31. They walked out into what felt like the mouth of a blast furnace but was only First Street. The town hall and post office were on one side of the street, the police station and offices of the Manzanar Free Press on the other. It felt at least ninety degrees in the shade as a hot wind raked sand across their faces.
“Well, it may be isolated,” Ralph noted, “but on the bright side, it’s also hotter than hell.”