Creating beauty

"It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process." Henry James


Of all the films I had seen on Manzanar, the one thing I didn't know about was the Japanese stone gardens the internees had created. In many of the housing blocks were these gorgeous stone gardens, with ponds at the time they had been created.


They had lovely symbolisms with Zen meanings like that seeing a crane and turtle together (the shapes of the rocks) leads to longevity.


These gardens had been lost to time and the elements but began being excavated and restored in 1994-- [Landscape Gardens and Gardeners at Manzanar Relocation Center]


Where I had come to Manzanar simply for recognizing it was something for Americans to not forget, I saw a more important reminder in these rock gardens and there were many throughout the site. Man will find a way to create beauty and with his creating of it, he will find comfort. The beauty he creates will give other people joy and the benefits do not end with one generation.


It made me want to visit the Japanese gardens in Portland as soon as I can work it out and to this summer create a Japanese type rock garden here at the farm. I have a feel of it several places but there is a place nothing has ever worked well right in front of our large living room window. The farm needs the energy from it.


Especially, I would like to create a Japanese lantern with stone which although I have one out of concrete, which I spent considerable muscle and energy pulling away from the bamboo, I hadn't ever made one. I saw how beautiful a stone one would be and began to look for the right rocks to make it happen.


When I asked the ranger on duty in the bookstore if there were any books on these wonderful gardens, he said not yet, but there was someone there at the time making a documentary on them. I will look forward to seeing it if it really comes out as this is something that deserves far more attention than I have seen it get.


He then told us about another of the gardens we had not seen, which required some walking, and that some considered to be the most beautiful. When we walked into it, I will have to say it made the most beautiful photographs which are both the first and last I have here.


Several artists are famous for having been interned here and gone on to create art other places. [Henry Fukuhara] is one example who first painted there as a prisoner to pass the time.


Many paintings were on display at a small gallery-- all created at Manzanar.


It truly is an extremely inspirational, creative and beautiful place to spend time-- when it's not a prison.

Because I felt our time at Manzanar was so wonderful, I decided to put all the photos onto a Picasa site, as a combination of the place and how it impacts a person who comes there-- [Manzanar May 2011]

Manzanar

Americans like to talk about how exceptional they are. It becomes a political argument how much better we are than other people-- and if you want to win a campaign, you better agree. Sometimes, though, a piece of our history reaches up to remind us that we have done some very unfair things. Yes, it's my country and I love it as much as an American, but nobody should be proud of all that it has done.


One example of that is [Manzanar], which was one of ten such camps, where during WWII, as many as 120,000 Japanese, many of them born in this country, 2/3 of them American citizens, but with the misfortune to live in one of the three western states, had their property taken and were imprisoned for no reason other than racial bigotry. If the reason was the war, then explain why Germans on the east coast weren't likewise imprisoned? It had to be revenge for Pearl Harbor; and, as usual with revenge, innocent people were the ones hurt by it.


When we came driving up U.S Route 395 in California, I had forgotten (if I knew) Manzanar was on it. I knew the name though and when we saw the National Historic Site was ahead, we turned in to learn more, to pay our respects to those who suffered here, some who died during those years when the United States referred to it as a relocation center-- euphemisms in the United States obviously aren't new.

This act was done by a Democratic president with an Executive Order. Amazing how many outrages are done that way, isn't it! It was admitted to having been a mistake with restitution offered to survivors by two Republican presidents. That pretty well says it was not a partisan issue but rather one of wronging one people out of revenge and fear from another people. We can only hope we have learned through it as we should have through Vietnam. Sometimes Americans though are pretty blind to history lessons.

For anyone who might want to think the people brought here were not like us, so it was okay, they were us. On the route you drive through the auto tour, you see where there had been a Buddhist temple but also Catholic and Protestant Christian buildings for worshipers.



When we were there, we saw Manzanar in a beautiful setting as it was a lovely early spring day in the high country. It would be not so much in the winter which lasts a long time at this elevation (3700 feet). It is a pretty valley if you don't think how it would be to be imprisoned there, having your freedom and property taken for no reason, when you were forced into small barracks with no privacy, where you were forced to work for pennies and pay for your own food with the wages, when you knew it wasn't fair, but you had to endure it.


This place was where originally there were homesteads; so the ranch remains are also on the site. Walking and driving the roads, seeing the film at its Center, the illustrative displays, led me to have even more respect for the stoicism of the Japanese people which was reinforced recently by their reaction to the horrific earthquake and tsunami with the aftermath of nuclear devastation. They really are a tough people.

So when you visit a place like Manzanar and there are other such sites, relating to more than the Japanese people, across this nation, you feel a mix of embarrassment that humans can act this way at the same time admiration for the strength of humans. There were those who came from outside to help improve the conditions in the prison. Many who saw it as wrong, but couldn't stop it, more who paid no attention to it or thought it was a good idea. When a nation (any nation) goes on a rampage, it's hard to stop it at the time. It is easy to convince the masses it's for their own good even if what they should realize is-- there could be me next time!


The inscription on the monument, created at the cemetery in 1942, means-- Soul Consoling Tower. Offerings are regularly left to show people have not forgotten. Most of the bodies (most of the dead here were cremated) were moved after the internment site closed. Six are left.



I will do one more blog for this place as it deserves it as there was something I didn't know about it and having seen several documentaries on it, I thought I had known it all.