Pasadena's Rose Bowl looked like a second-hand auto park. In the chill dawn, 140 battered cars and sagging trucks huddled, piled high with furniture, bundles, gardening tools. At 6:30 a.m. they chuffed and spluttered, wheeled into line, and started rolling. Led by a goggled policeman on a motorcycle, a jeep and three command cars full of newsmen, they headed for the dark, towering mountains to the east.
Thus, last week, the first compulsory migration in U.S. history set out for Manzanar, in California's desolate Owens Valley. In the cavalcade were some 300 Japanese aliens and Nisei—U.S. citizens of Japanese blood. They were part of the first mass evacuation from the forbidden strip of West Coast land which Lieut. General John Lesesne DeWitt has made a military zone (TIME, March 16).
At the old Santa Fe station in down town Los Angeles another group of 500 aliens and Nisei (all men, as were the Japs who went by motor) boarded a special 13-car Southern Pacific train for Manzanar. A few impassive-faced Japanese women stood on the platform, handed up pop bottles through the open windows, waved good-by with composure. One was a white girl, clutching the hand of a small, wide-eyed, yellow-skinned boy.
Desert City. At the Army "reception center," nine miles beyond Lone Pine, the Japs piled out. They were greeted by 88 Japanese men and girls who went ahead to put the camp in order. In the unfinished, tar-papered dormitories where they will live until the war ends, they made their beds on mattress ticking filled with straw, dined on rice and meat, prunes and coffee, dished out by Japanese cooks.
At Manzanar, General DeWitt may settle as many as 50,000 of the Coast's 112,353 Jap aliens and Nisei. Another 20,000 will be placed on the Colorado River Indian Reservation at Parker, Ariz.
The first emigrants to Manzanar were Japanese plumbers, carpenters, mechanics who will help build the desert city. Wives and children will follow later. Some projects with which the Army may keep its guests busy: laying broad-gauge track on the railway down the valley; driving a highway across the Sierras (nearest all-weather crossing is 400 miles away); farming. They will earn from $50 to $94 a month, with $15 deducted for living expenses. All they forfeit is their freedom. They cannot leave the camp without permission.
"God Bless America." The Army hoped that most Japs and Nisei would go quietly, of their own accord. Japanese spokesmen said that was wishful thinking: some 90% of the Coast's Japs are destitute, or will be in a few weeks.
Most aliens, far from thinking the Army's haste unseemly, wished last week that General DeWitt would move them faster, before they starve. In San Francisco's Little Tokyo, store fronts were plastered with huge signs, proclaiming: "Evacuation Sale." In one window, under the sign, hung a red-white-&-blue poster: "God Bless America, the Land We Love." Under that, another sign: "Twenty Percent Off."
What kind of people were these Japs and Nisei?