Manzanar Internment Camp, California

A relocation center for nearly 10,000 Japanese Americans who were imprisoned here during World War II. This is one of several internment camps in the Southwest, which in total confined about 110,000 people of Japanese descent, from 1941 (Pearl Harbor), until 1945, despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1944 that the War Relocation Authority (WRA) had no right to imprison Japanese-American citizens deemed to be loyal. Buildings at the site have been removed except for two stone guard houses and what had once been an auditorium, which now serves as a visitor's center, featuring exhibits and a documentary film. The site is slowly being transformed into a public historic site, and a looped driving tour passes by the concrete pads, rock gardens, and other slight ruins of the hundreds of buildings that once stood on the site. The graveyard has a large commemorative monument.