Internment(15)
The two-lane highway from Independence to the camp is quiet except for the small caravan of buses heading into the desert. The landscape is bleak but undeniably beautiful. A liquid blue sky stands out against the snow-tipped peaks of the Sierra Nevada. And the sun gleams. Too bright, almost. Can nature be ironic? Destructive, yes. But nature’s overwhelming power is amoral. If people die in a storm, they’re collateral damage, like any other object in the storm’s path—a lamppost, a car, a house. The unintentional side effects of wind or wave or current. Unlike people, nature carries out no vendettas. Yet the simple loveliness of the sky and sun and mountains makes me feel like nature is complicit in my country’s betrayal.
After ten short minutes the buses pass Manzanar, the old Japanese American internment camp. It’s desolate. I shudder when I see the weathered wooden sign that declares MANZANAR WAR RELOCATION CENTER. Every head in our bus turns to stare as we drive by, and I’m taken by how huge the space is. It’s the desert, and nothing is out here but empty land and what looks like thousands of acres enclosed by a simple wooden fence. There are a few barracks and a sign pointing to the Visitor Center. Manzanar was a historic site, run by the National Park Service, my mom told me, but a couple of months ago, the Park Service lost its funding and this place was shut down. I glance back as we drive on. A tattered American flag still flies atop a pole in the center of the camp. Everything looks sepia-toned except the flag, with its faded red stripes and blue field of stars.
We drive on. Those abandoned flimsy barracks at Manzanar occupy my brain. Is that how we’re going to live now? There’s a damp patch of sweat on my jeans in the shape of my right palm. I feel the panic and anxiety coming off everyone in silent waves. I don’t think any of us really believe this is happening.
The buses slow down as we approach a perimeter of chain-link fence that must be, I don’t know, at least fifteen feet high. All around, as far as I can see, the fence is topped with curling razor wire. Watchtowers rise into the sky, guards with guns looming above us. It’s prison. I close my eyes and feel my mom squeeze my hand. I hear her muttering a prayer to herself. I join her.
I wonder if others felt this way—the Japanese Americans who were imprisoned during World War II. Did they also feel this surreal separation from the experience, like they were detached from their bodies, watching themselves enter this camp, like ghosts, shades of who they were? Did they wonder how long they would be here? Could they have imagined it would be years? Did some try to block it all out, compartmentalize, imagine that it was only one more day? Because we aren’t even through this giant electronic gate yet and I feel like my real life is already a million miles away.
Exclusion Guards at the gate entrance clear the drivers after a visual inspection of the inside, outside, and underside of the buses. The gate opens and the buses enter the camp, kicking up so much dust I can barely see out.
“Everybody off,” the driver snaps at us after coming to an abrupt stop inside the gate. “Single file. Report to the Hub.” He points at the light-gray behemoth of a building that squats in the center of camp. “Register by last names and get your quarters assigned.”
Like leashed zombies, a few hundred of us stagger toward the largest building on the site. Families walk in tight huddles, arms around one another. Lots of brown and black faces—like you’d see at any mosque. There are also Muslims here who could pass as white—probably of Arab or Persian descent; white, but without all the privilege.
One detail that’s impossible to miss? Just like in the train station, every person with a gun is white, and not white like maybe they’re Bosnian—the kind of white that thinks internment camps are going to make America great again.
The Hub is marked by an American flag fluttering fifty feet up in the air, and large black plastic letters above the door: MOBIUS. Exclusion Authority bureaucrats mill around on their phones amid a heavy presence of armed Exclusion Guards. Some Authority guys step in and out of a gray modular building attached to the Hub. An office of some sort? As we proceed to the Hub, I start to understand the extent of the camp and how the razor-wired, sky-high security fence pens us in for miles, cameras trained on us. And there are rows and rows of FEMA trailers. I’ve seen them on TV before, the trailers the government puts up for people who’ve lost their homes in natural disasters. But now the natural disaster is being Muslim.
My vision clouds. I blink against the dust, and my knees buckle a little. I grab onto my dad’s arm. Every muscle in his arm is taut. He straightens his backpack. He and my mom are holding hands, and I catch them looking at each other. They’re run-down. The few wrinkles they have are highlighted by this dust that’s blowing everywhere. They look so small, so human. When you’re a kid, you think your parents are invincible and all-knowing, and then you start to grow up and realize that they’re simply flawed human beings trying to make their way in the world the best they can.
We all look like ants marching in this dust straight into a giant trap where we’ll be stuck or where we’ll be fed poison that we inadvertently spread to the rest of the group. I bite my lip, but I don’t even feel it. What’s that thing people always say about history? Unless we know our history, we’re doomed to repeat it? Never forget? Isn’t that the lesson? But we always forget. Forgetting is in the American grain.
Someone yells out ahead of us. There’s some kind of tussle.