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we'd like to share with you the historic
orchards of manzanar National Historic
Site manzanar is preserved by the
National Park Service and as one of 10
World War 2 internment camps where
japanese-americans were confined from
1942 to 1945 here are 10,000 people most
of them US citizens were held behind
barbed wire by the US government for
stated reasons of national security
they grew some of their own food within
the internment camp including fruit from
orchard trees that were already growing
on the land today some of the orchard
trees still remain and they help us
better understand what life was like
during the camp period my name is Dave
Coto
I am the arbors here at Manzanar
National Historic Site and my main duty
while I work here at Manzanar is to
preserve the historic orchards and our
main goal in preserving this orchard is
to one maintain the historic trees that
are alive and also replace the trees
that were missing inside the main body
of what we are in the Wilder orchard and
so as you can see this is a historic
Bartlett pear tree of the Wilder orchard
it is over almost 100 years old if not a
hundred years old and when this all
first started these trees were in really
bad shape and so over the past 15 years
myself and the man's and our staff have
worked to bring these trees really back
to their historic form and also to keep
them disease-free and rejuvenate the
trees themselves
so during our restoration project here
in refilling old spots we have done two
different things we have bought
commercially grown stock which is one
disease resistant and also it is rather
pervious to drought and then also we did
custom propagations using the sort trees
to graft on to two different root stocks
one is a Bartlett Bartlett seedling
which actually would have been taken
from a Bartlett tree and then grown as a
root stock and then put the historic
tree on top of it and also we use the
root stock of old home in Farmingdale 97
which is a disease resistant more
contemporary root stock that was
developed in the 50s the National Park
Service is working with Lone Pine high
school to teach preservation techniques
and horticulture to students students
learn how to graft trees from certified
National Park Service arborists most
fruit trees in the world including the
historic fruit trees at Manzanar consist
of two trees joined together through
grafting the upper part known as the
Scion is joined to the roots or root
stock through a graft Union to propagate
new trees for Manzanar the students
grafted cuttings from the historic trees
onto root stocks as the students
continue to care for the new grafts they
are also helping to care for the future
of orchards at Manzanar
Oh
and we want them to join up and touch
and eventually the cells from each will
grow together and become they'll form a
strong rapid union and they'll become
one plan
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oh this is cute one two three awesome
guys
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Manson our national historic site was
created in 1992 enabling the National
Park Service to begin to restore parts
of the former camp that had been
abandoned since 1945 by 1992 the
surviving fruit trees were in bad shape
lots of work was needed to bring them
into stable condition today the historic
trees are protected and well maintained
they could live for another 100 years
and the new trees will extend the life
of the orchards even further