During WWII, some 110,000 Japanese-Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were interned in ten 'Relocation Camps.' First settled and the most famous, Manzanar camp was constructed in Owens Valley, California. So far, quite a few interviews with Japanese-American internees have been conducted. It seems, however, to be rather difficult to find documentation of interviews with ‘ordinary’ Caucasians who lived in Owens Valley during the period.
The California State University Fullerton Oral History Program, officially inaugurated in 1967, keeps the tapes and its documentation of nearly 2,000 interviews. As to Japanese evacuation and relocation, Professor. Arthur A. Hansen and his staff began to concentrate on it in 1973. Their efforts inevitably included the interviews with Caucasians living in Lone Pine and Independence, both situated in Owens Valley and only several miles from Manzanar camp.
The text used for translation is Camp and Community: Manzanar and the Owens Valley, 1978 & 2004, CSUF. The title of the book was originally Jap Camp and was changed to the title above due to opposition and charges from a group of Japanese-American militants. A couple of interviews will be introduced in this article. One interview is with a homemaker who was from Los Angeles and the other with a male automobile dealer. When the war broke out, they were both in their mid-thirties. Their surname was Miller, which is coincidental and does not mean they were husband and wife. Readers might refer interest to another book, Roger Axford, Too Long Silent: Japanese-Americans Speak Out, 1986, which contains interviews with Japanese-American internees and whose translation was published by me in 1991.
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