Frank Hays, Superintendent, Manzanar National Historic Site
Interviewed by Chuck Smythe, Ph.D., Cultural Anthropologist
May 21, 2002 - Telephone Interview

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CHUCK SMYTHE: I wanted to mention before we begin - I might have talked to you about this already, but this project is one of the initiatives that was started under the direction of the Northeast Regional Director, Marie Rust. She established a Memorial Task Group to undertake a variety of activities related to the attacks and their aftermath. And one of these was to initiate an oral history documentation effort to record people's experiences and Park Service responses to the issues that came about either in their park or in your case in parks further away. Things that might have impacted you and caused you to adjust or do things out of the normal.

FRANK HAYS: Right.

CHUCK SMYTHE: So thanks again agreeing to talk. And again we're recording both official activities and changes and responses, but also personal reflections and experiences. So I'll be talking to you about those dimensions … because they're both important. … I guess I was wondering maybe we could start with that day and how that started for you and then lead into kind of how things were affected at the park.

FRANK HAYS: Well, I think I was watching the sports channel that morning and saw just a quick reference that said, "Due to events in New York we're canceling this scheduled program. " And I'm like what, you know, what's going on? So I flipped the channel and then of course I saw all those powerful tragic images that were going on during the day. And I know it was hard for me to drag myself away from the television, watching what was going on to come in to work that morning, but I felt like I needed to get in here just in case, you know, there [were] questions about whether we were open or anything like that.

CHUCK SMYTHE: So that crossed your mind before you even left the house?

FRANK HAYS: Oh yeah, it was automatic. Just - not only operationally the fact that, you know, people might wonder if we were going to be open. But also the fact that they were already identifying Osama Bin Laden as a primary target and I wanted just to be here because Manzanar has such a powerful civil rights story to tell that, you know, I anticipated that Arab-Americans may come under some similar magnifying glass that the Japanese-Americans did after Pearl Harbor. And I just assumed that I needed to be in the office. I got in the office and right away talked to my employees who were experiencing similar types of feelings. And I actually told them to come in, you know, when they felt like it, that I would handle the park and the phone calls and whatever unless something came up and then I'd call them in. And then it was quiet all morning and not much happened. I got a phone call from our regional office asking if I had taken any action closing the park or whatever because some parks were closed. And I said, "No, we are still open."

CHUCK SMYTHE: Did they leave it up to you at that point?

FRANK HAYS: Yeah, they had left it up to me whether we opened or not. And we just left it open. I didn't feel like there was any security problems at the time.

It was a pretty quiet morning. It wasn't until a day or two later that we had some 9-11 kind of offerings left at the site. ... A large U.S. flag was hung on the recently re-constructed and installed Manzanar Relocation Center sign … it's a replication of the historic sign of the entrance into the park.

And I think it was actually the 12th that this fairly large flag showed up … attached to the sign. There wasn't any written word or any indication … why they left behind the flag. But a day or two later there [were] other flags left - smaller flags left on the locust pole fence that surrounds the cemetery here at the park. And the cemetery is kind of the central attraction and role. [It is a] powerful moving place and so we get offerings left at the memorial there at the cemetery all the time. And it was just interesting to see … and I don't know that in the year I've been here that I'd ever seen a flag there left before. And right after 9-11 - which … was, you know, a sign of patriotism, but also I'm guessing a reflection upon the significance of Manzanar and the dialog about civil rights. …

CHUCK SMYTHE: Did you leave the flag, particularly that large one?

FRANK HAYS: We left it for a day and then just thought it may be something significant enough that we collected it … and are going to put it in our collection. The ones at the cemetery we did not collect - well, I think we collected one of the smaller flags that was left there, but the other ones disappeared before we were able to collect them. …

CHUCK SMYTHE: Tell me though, you saw right away a connection between the September 11th [events] and your park and the kind of message that you're trying to develop there. Could you describe that a little bit, that connection and -

FRANK HAYS: Well, from reading about Manzanar I knew that the Japanese-American population fell under immediate suspicion for a variety of reasons. I mean, there was already a long pattern of racism toward the Japanese-Americans and Asians in particular along the West Coast. And because of Pearl Harbor, you know, those racist tendencies were inflamed and this whole population came under this magnifying glass and they were looked at. And because of racism and for what ever other reasons, fear, hysteria, lack of leadership from the government, whatever, probably all of them combined and other issues that we haven't even thought about led to the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans from the exclusion zone along the West Coast and part of Arizona. And I just knew that morning - I knew that Manzanar would probably get some phone calls from the press to make connections between that site and what happened to Arab-Americans. And on a personal level, you know, I just felt grief, concern for the Arab-American population because I knew right away that there would be parts of our country, whether it was organizations or mostly individuals that would automatically focus their attentions on Arab-Americans and call them into question just because they are Arab-Americans. And because they're Arab-Americans and just like the Japanese-Americans they're much easier to distinguish from the rest of the population. That's kind of automatic that these suspicions get focused on these folks. …

September 11, 2001 Oral History Documentation Project
Northeast Region, National Park Service

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