Sunrise, Manzanar “Relocation Camp”, California (2013)

One day they’ll have the guts to call this what it was — a concentration camp (Manzanar “relocation center”).

When I first drove past here more than twenty years ago, there really wasn’t anything marking the place — maybe just a plaque a little down US 395 from the old county maintenance shed, and no one I asked was entirely sure where it was (there were no signs on the highway). No one really ever mentioned it; the idea of it being a concentration camp was deeply controversial. Nowadays it’s being slowly recreated (there’s a new old guard tower as well as the sentry and guard stations), and it’s at least a little on the locals’ minds, if only as a potential tourist attraction, and the term “concentration camp” gets used a little more freely. And it’s got its own rather nice National Parks page for the curious.

The thing that’s always struck me, though, is just how physically beautiful the location is: the High Sierra to the west, the Inyos to the east, the desert floor… hell to live in, though, especially in forced camps.

I try to visit the place every year.