Manzanar!!!

The Tag Project set up shop in the Mess Hall at Manzanar, during the 41st Manzanar Pilgrimage on Saturday, April 24th from 9 AM - 4 PM! We filled out about 1500 tags from the Manzanar database, and in the process, got to know some interesting people!! The Florin JACL and Sacramento CAIR group filled out several pages of the database during their lunch break which was wonderful.

Special thanks go to Joe Virata, and his group, UCRiverside Asian Pacific Student Programs, and to Claudia Cardenas's group from the Franklin High School Magnet in Los Angeles!! The enthusiasm and energy shown by these young people actually give me a tremendous amount of hope in that the remembrance of this terrible chapter in American History will continue and hopefully continue to educate. It is difficult though, considering the recent passage of the immigration law in Arizona this month, and the fact that Texas plans to "whitewash" their history books, altering the interpretation of Executive Order 9066 - "as the regulation of some foreign nationals". http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124861233

The weather was very beautiful, and it did get pretty hot - I was sweating like a pig in the mess hall, which gave me a preettttyyy good idea of what it must have been like to live there. I just can't imagine how the internees did that for 4 years, and in the cold winter too???? Those walls were awfully thin.

I am grateful to Kerry Cababa and the Manzanar Committee for the invitation to participate this year, and to Park Superintendent Les Inafuku for helping me set up in the Mess Hall!