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Graves of the Confined | Manzanar Cemetery, California · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

0:13
Kristin: Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
0:16
Kristin: I'm your host, Kristen.
0:18
Kristin: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering Manzanar Cemetery, located near Independence, California.
0:25
Kristin: The aroma of coffee mingles in the air.
0:28
Kristin: The gates stand open.
0:30
Kristin: Step carefully.
0:31
Kristin: It's time to descend into the hauntings of history.
0:34
Kristin: As Americans, we carry a deep sense of pride in our country.
0:38
Kristin: More often than not, we speak of its greatness, of opportunity, resilience, and progress.
0:43
Kristin: And yet, for all that pride, our history is not without its shadows.
0:48
Kristin: Manzanar Cemetery stands as one of them.
0:50
Kristin: It marks a chapter many would rather forget, a place tied to one of the most sobering moments in American history.
0:57
Kristin: But for those buried there and for the thousands who once lived behind its boundaries, forgetting was never an option.
1:03
Kristin: Remembrance is not just an act of respect.
1:06
Kristin: It's a responsibility.
1:07
Kristin: Because places like Manzana remind us that history is not only something to celebrate, but something to confront.
1:14
Kristin: And only through that confrontation can we hope not to repeat it.
1:17
Kristin: The phrase concentration camps carries a weight that most of us immediately associate with World War II in Germany, with unimaginable loss, cruelty, and suffering.
1:27
Kristin: But Germany was not the only nation to build camps, and that is a truth many still struggle to face.
1:33
Kristin: America had its own, on its own soil.
1:36
Kristin: Were they different in some ways?
1:38
Kristin: Yes.
1:39
Kristin: But their fundamental mechanisms, surveillance, confinement, and separation from society were strikingly familiar.
1:46
Kristin: So how does a country, built on the promise of liberty and justice for all, arrive at something like that?
1:52
Kristin: One word, fear, fear of indifference, fear of economic competition, fear disguised as national security.
1:59
Kristin: But it didn't happen overnight.
2:01
Kristin: These fears had been building for decades, quietly taking root long before the war had begun.
2:06
Kristin: Beginning in the late 19th century, Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii in the mainland United States, seeking opportunity much like many others before them.
2:15
Kristin: Many were grueling contracts in the sugarcane veals of Hawaii.
2:18
Kristin: Others made their way to the West Coast, where they built lives from the margins, cultivating farmland, tending orchards, fishing coastal waters, and opening small businesses.
2:28
Kristin: And they succeeded.
2:29
Kristin: By 1940, although Japanese Americans made up less than 4% of California's farmers, they produced more than 10% of its agricultural value.
2:38
Kristin: They had come in search of the American dream.
2:41
Kristin: And in many ways they found it, perhaps for some a little too successfully.
2:45
Kristin: Because alongside that success came resentment, and alongside resentment came exclusion.
2:51
Kristin: Anti-Asian racism shaped where they could live, what opportunities they could access, and whether they could ever truly be accepted.
2:58
Kristin: Along with Forexecutive Order 9066, Japanese American communities were already being watched.
3:05
Kristin: Federal intelligence efforts monitored communities in both Hawaii and on the West Coast, documenting labor movements, fishing communities, and immigrant neighborhoods under the suspicion of political subversion.
3:17
Kristin: Surveillance did not begin with the war, it deepened because of it.
3:21
Kristin: After Pearl Harbor, that existing suspicion was reframed through the language of national security and quickly expanded into policy.
3:28
Kristin: What had once been observation became justification.
3:32
Kristin: In 1913, the alien Anlact already stripped many Japanese immigrants of their right to own land in California.
3:38
Kristin: Then in 1922, the Supreme Court in Aswa versus the United States made something even more final.
3:45
Kristin: No matter how long they lived here, no matter how much they contributed, they were not considered eligible for citizenship, not fully, not legally, not equally.
3:54
Kristin: And still many stayed.
3:56
Kristin: They believed in the promise of America until December 7th, 1941.
4:01
Kristin: The sky above Pearl Harbor burned, and with it something far less visible ignited across the mainland.
4:07
Kristin: Fear, suspicion, and a prejudice that had been waiting for its moment.
4:11
Kristin: Suddenly the enemy had a face, and it looked far too familiar.
4:15
Kristin: What followed was everything they feared and worse.
4:18
Kristin: Politicians, competing businesses, and long-standing nativists' voices began calling for action.
4:23
Kristin: On the West Coast, especially, fear of national security merged with economic tension and racial distrust created a perfect storm.
4:31
Kristin: Behind the scenes, federal agencies moved quickly.
4:34
Kristin: The FBI began investigating and arresting so-called enemy aliens, individuals who were brought before the alien enemy hearing boards for review.
4:42
Kristin: Many of these records still exist today, preserved in federal archives, though many details of individual cases remain buried in layers of classification, documentation, and time.
4:52
Kristin: Even within the government itself, there was disagreement on this course of action.
4:56
Kristin: Members of the Department of Justice raised constitutional concerns, warning that mass action based on ancestry alone could violate the very principles the country claimed to uphold.
5:06
Kristin: But these warnings were ultimately set aside.
5:08
Kristin: And on February 19, 1942, Franklin D.
5:11
Kristin: Roosevelt signed the executive order in 9066.
5:15
Kristin: The order itself never named a specific group, but its consequences did.
5:19
Kristin: The order was not limited to Japanese Americans.
5:22
Kristin: It would technically apply to German and Italian nationals as well.
5:26
Kristin: The scale tells its own story.
5:28
Kristin: Only 11,500 Germans across the entire United States were detained, compared to more than 140,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast alone.
5:38
Kristin: Instead of immediate incarceration, authorities began with smaller restrictions.
5:42
Kristin: Curviews came first, then notices.
5:46
Kristin: Families were given just 48 hours, 48 hours to gather what they could carry to leave behind homes, businesses, heirlooms, entire lives built over decades.
5:56
Kristin: They didn't just lose property, they lost proof that they had ever truly belonged.
6:01
Kristin: More than 140,000 men, women, and children were taken, first to temporary assembly centers, then to camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded towers, places whose names still echo quietly throughout history.
6:13
Kristin: Manzanar, Two Lake, Heart Mountain, nearly 70,000 of them were American citizens.
6:19
Kristin: They were never charged, there were no trials and no crimes, only ancestry.
6:24
Kristin: And still, even here behind the fences and under watchful eyes, loyalty was expected, and remarkably it was given.
6:31
Kristin: More than 30,000 Japanese Americans would go on to serve in the United States military, fighting for a country that had already imprisoned them.
6:38
Kristin: But Manzanar was not a single enclosed world.
6:42
Kristin: It was one of ten camps built across the United States, and even within its boundaries, there were further divisions, lines drawn not just by barbed wire but within it.
6:52
Kristin: Another layer of separation, a children's orphanage, the children's village.
6:57
Kristin: Excluded even from the rest of the camp population.
7:00
Kristin: On paper it was described as a place for children without families, orphans.
7:04
Kristin: But the reality was far more complicated than that.
7:07
Kristin: Some of the children living there did have parents, parents who were also behind the same fences, living only a short distance away within Manzanar itself.
7:16
Kristin: And yet for a time they were not allowed to see them.
7:19
Kristin: Even when family existed, connection was restricted, delayed, and controlled.
7:24
Kristin: Some children would not be reunited until much later, after rules shifted, after pressure built, and after time inside the camp had already begun to settle in.
7:33
Kristin: Separation was not always a matter of distance.
7:36
Kristin: Sometimes it was policy.
7:38
Kristin: Even within the same barbed wire perimeter, families could still be divided.
7:42
Kristin: The orphanage itself was framed as structure and care, a way to create stability in uncertain conditions.
7:48
Kristin: Children were taught routine, discipline, and daily responsibilities.
7:52
Kristin: They were given small allowances, savings accounts, lessons meant to prepare them for becoming what officials called model citizens.
8:00
Kristin: But inside that structure, there was something harder to sit with.
8:03
Kristin: Because these were children living in a system that had already taken their freedom, while also, for a time, taking away their families.
8:10
Kristin: And even when reunions came that didn't erase what had already been lived.
8:14
Kristin: The policy that had brought so many of these children were rooted in something stark and unforgiving.
8:19
Kristin: Officials declared that even a single drop of Japanese ancestry was enough.
8:24
Kristin: Enough to be removed, enough to be confined.
8:26
Kristin: Children were taken from orphanages and institutions, sometimes without fully understanding why.
8:32
Kristin: Some barely knew they were considered Japanese American at all.
8:35
Kristin: One boy, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, only learned it when someone reviewed his file and turned him in.
8:41
Kristin: Others were simply too young to question it.
8:43
Kristin: On the bus to Manzanar, some of the children sang songs, told jokes.
8:48
Kristin: They thought they were going on a trip, something like a picnic.
8:51
Kristin: They didn't know yet that they were being taken.
8:53
Kristin: For many, the understanding came later.
8:56
Kristin: Francis Honda was just seven years old when he arrived.
8:59
Kristin: Years later, he would describe it simply.
9:02
Kristin: It was the lonely.
9:18
Kristin: The Odyssey, Les Miserables, bringing entire worlds to life beyond the barbed wire.
9:23
Kristin: Even in confinement, imagination endured.
9:26
Kristin: But the story didn't end when the camp closed.
9:29
Kristin: For many of these children, leaving Manzanar became another kind of loss.
9:33
Kristin: Because the orphanage, for all that it was, had become the closest thing to a family that they knew.
9:39
Kristin: When it ended, they were scattered, some reunited with parents, others sent to institutions, wage homes, or new placements.
9:46
Kristin: Only a few found permanent homes through adoption.
9:49
Kristin: The separation simply didn't end, it changed.
9:52
Kristin: And for many it followed them long after the fences were gone, but not everyone in the camp would return to a normal life, and not all would be reunited.
10:01
Kristin: On May 16, 1942, Masunuki Murakami, age 62, became the first to die at Manzanar.
10:08
Kristin: He would not be alone for long.
10:10
Kristin: In time, approximately 150 men, women, and children would die within the confines of the camp.
10:16
Kristin: Manzanar itself was one of the ten war relocation authority camps built across the United States during World War II, but within its boundaries, it developed places of confinement, separation, and mourning that were never part of its original design, including its cemetery.
10:32
Kristin: Barrel at Manzanar was not originally planned.
10:35
Kristin: The cemetery didn't exist at the camp's opening, and emerged out of necessity, shaped by death in a place that had not been prepared for it.
10:43
Kristin: It was located just beyond the barbed wire fence in what had once been a peach orchard from Manzanar's earlier farming days.
10:50
Kristin: The land was dry, exposed, and set against the stark backdrop of the Sierra Nevada and Mount Williamson.
10:56
Kristin: Graves were dug quickly, markers were simple, materials were limited.
11:00
Kristin: Even in death, the incarcerated were kept just outside the boundaries of the camp.
11:04
Kristin: Murakami, along with fourteen others, many of them infants, elderly men, and individuals without family support, was among the first laid to rest here.
11:14
Kristin: And yet, even in those early days, the dead were not buried in isolation.
11:18
Kristin: Funerals were held in the open desert, often attended by hundreds of mourners, fellow incarcerees who gathered to grieve to witness, and to ensure that those lives were not forgotten.
11:28
Kristin: But burial was not the most common form of interment.
11:31
Kristin: Most who died at Manzanar were cremated, not by personal choice, but by circumstance.
11:37
Kristin: Space was limited, resources were controlled, and so cremation became the standard practice within the camp.
11:43
Kristin: Their ashes were also kept there, held inside Manzanar, until families could return for them, if they were ever able to at all.
11:51
Kristin: Some were eventually carried home after the war, but many were not.
11:55
Kristin: And because of that, the number of graves here would never reflect the number of lives lost.
12:00
Kristin: Over time, the cemetery itself changed.
12:02
Kristin: Today only six graves remain.
12:05
Kristin: Six.
12:06
Kristin: They include three adult men, Morukami, Kihara, and Fukumotu, along with two infants and one stillborn child in an unmarked grave with no name.
12:16
Kristin: Most of the original burials were later removed after the war when families returned to reclaim what they could, relocating loved ones, repatriating remains, or carrying ashes away from a place that had already taken so much.
12:29
Kristin: What remains now is only a fraction of what once existed, but it's not empty.
12:34
Kristin: At the center of the cemetery stands a white obelisk, the sole consoling tower.
12:39
Kristin: It was built in 1943 by the incarceries themselves, not by the government, but by those living within the camp, funded through small contributions of just 15 cents from each family.
12:50
Kristin: It was designed by Stoves Mason Ryozo Keito, a Catholic, and its inscription was carefully carved by Sinjo Nagatomi, a Buddhist minister, two faiths, one monument, a shared act of mourning shaped in stone.
13:03
Kristin: On its face, the conja reads Soul Consoling Tower, a name that doesn't explain what happened here, but instead holds space for it.
13:10
Kristin: And on the reverse, a quieter declaration, erected by the Manzanar Japanese, August 1943, a choice of words, a way of naming themselves in a place where so much was taken from them.
13:23
Kristin: The tower still stands today, one of the few original structures that remains.
13:28
Kristin: Still, white, enduring against the desert wind.
13:32
Kristin: After Manzanar closed in November of 1945, the site was dismantled, barracks were sold off, reused, or destroyed, the land returned to the desert.
13:42
Kristin: The cemetery, however, remained one of the few preserved spaces, slowly becoming a site of memory rather than function.
13:49
Kristin: In the decades that followed, the site was restored and formally protected as part of the Manzanar National Historic Site.
13:55
Kristin: Under the stewardship of the National Park Service, archaeological work, preservation efforts, and restoration projects have since maintained the cemetery and monument.
14:05
Kristin: Over time, the cemetery also has become a place of return.
14:09
Kristin: Beginning shortly after the war, Buddhist and Christian memorial services resumed at the site.
14:14
Kristin: By 1969, organized pilgrimages began, evolving into the annual Manzanar Pilgrimage, held each year at the last Saturday in April.
14:24
Kristin: Today, people travel from across the United States and abroad to attend.
14:28
Kristin: They gather at the cemetery to offer prayers, speak names, leave offerings such as flowers, coins, origami cranes and water, and to participate in remembrance ceremonies that honor those who died at Manzanar.
14:41
Kristin: Because this place is not only historical, it's an act of memory, a site where grief is still practiced, and where silence is still answered.
14:49
Kristin: In the decades following incarceration, Japanese American communities and survivors advocated for recognition of what happened at Manzanar and other camps.
14:59
Kristin: In the 1980s, this led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which included a formal apology from the United States government and reparations of$20,000 to surviving incarcerees.
15:10
Kristin: It was an acknowledgement, but not a full reckoning of the financial, emotional, and generational harm caused.
15:17
Kristin: It exists within a broader American historical context in which other communities impacted by displacement, slavery, colonization, and systematic violence have not received equivalent redress.
15:28
Kristin: From any descendants and survivors, Manzanar is therefore not only a place of remembrance, but also a place of continuing reflection on justice itself, on what is repaired and what remains unresolved.
15:41
Kristin: Because even now, long after the fences are gone, Manzanar remains, and so do they.
15:47
Kristin: For now the stories of Manzanar slid back into the sand, and the dead return to their uneasy rest.
15:53
Kristin: And thank you for walking with us through the veil into Manzanar Cemetery, descending once more into the hauntings of history.
16:00
Kristin: The gate is sealed, the veil drawn, yet death keeps no calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grim.