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Tahoe Nugget #20:
Manzanar
The Manzanar National Historic site is located about 7 miles north of Lone Pine on Highway 395 in eastern California. Two months after
Pearl Harbor was bombed, President Roosevelt signed an Executive Order calling for all persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast to be confined to relocation camps. Manzanar was one of the relocation centers
established in various western states. Built initially as a temporary holding facility, it became the first permanent center in the United States. There were 10,000 Japanese internees housed there until late 1945
when the camp was closed and nearly all buildings removed from the site.
Many of the total 120,000 Japanese people who were relocated during World War II were American-born, and even infants adopted by Caucasian parents were
included in the order. Whole families were held in barbed-wire encampment under armed guards for years, many losing their savings, homes, and businesses in the process.
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