Cemetery Offerings

On May 16, 1942, Matsunosuke Murakami, 62, became the first of 150 men, women, and children to die in camp. He and 14 others, most infants and older men without families, were laid to rest in the Manzanar cemetery. The cemetery was outside the barbed wire fence in an old peach orchard from Manzanar's farming era. In the shadow of majestic Mt. Williamson their somber funerals and memorials were attended by hundreds of mourners.

While some deceased were sent to hometown cemeteries, most were cremated. Their ashes were held in camp until their families left Manzanar.  Six burials remain today.
 
Visiting the cemetery can be a personal pilgrimage: of reflection, worship, remembrance, or protest.  Some people leave offerings: coins, personal mementos, paper cranes, water and sake, and religious items.  These are tangible expressions of the ongoing, unspoken conversations about America’s past and its future.

For more than six decades, the large concrete monument in the Manzanar cemetery has memorialized those who died here. The monument’s Japanese Kanji characters read, “Soul Consoling Tower” on the front and “Erected by the Manzanar Japanese, August 1943” on the back.