Manzanar Relocation Center for Japanese-Americans Closed
Manzanar, one of the Relocation Centers (usually referred to as concentration camps) in the evacuation and internment of the Japanese-American during World War II, was officially closed on this day.
See February 19, 1942 for President Roosevelt’s Executive Order authorizing the program. Many historians regard the evacuation and internment of the Japanese-Americans as the greatest civil liberties tragedy in American history.
The government’s program was officially ended on December 17, 1944, but Manzanar did not close until this day, almost a year later.
The site was designated a National Historic Site, on March 3, 1992, and is now managed by the National Park Service.
Visit the NPS web site: http://www.nps.gov/manz/index.htm
Read a first-hand account of the evacuation and internment: Jeanne Wakatsuki Huston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (2002)
Watch an interview with Jeanne Wakatsuki Huston: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDDFw5TGkJo