travel
Manzanar, the WW2 Japanese internment site
Manzanar National Historic Site in Inyo County. WW2 Japanese American internment camp. Heavy history, worth the visit.
If you’re in Inyo County, stop at Manzanar. It’s one of the camps where Japanese Americans were held during World War II. About 10,000 people were interned here between 1942 and 1945.
Most of the camp is gone now. There’s a museum, some reconstructed barracks, and the original guard towers. You can walk around and see where everything used to be.
The Soul Consoling Tower, or Irei-to, is a Buddhist monument the internees built. It’s for the people who died at the camp. Small white obelisk out in the cemetery.
The desert stretches out in every direction. Mountains on both sides. You get a sense of how isolated this place was.
[!NOTE] Manzanar is in Inyo County, about 230 miles from San Francisco. It fits naturally into an Eastern Sierra trip along US-395, with Mammoth Lakes, natural hot springs, and Convict Lake farther north.
It’s a heavy place to visit, but an important one.