Block 22 Garden, Manzanar

Block 22 Mess Hall Garden, Toyo Miyatake

Courtesy of Toyo Miyatake Studio

Quick Facts

Location:

central part of Manzanar

Amenities

2 listed

Benches/Seating, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

“We’d be standing there in our mess hall line, and the sun is so hot. So I said, ‘How about we dig a big pond there? We got plenty of water and we’ll put lot of rock around. That’ll cool off things a little, and people could sit and wait ‘til the mess hall’s open.’ So we built a great big pond.”
Block 22 kitchen worker, Harry Ueno

It is serene here now, but Block 22 Garden, built as a gesture of compassion, was to become a testing ground of resistance at Manzanar. Deep generational differences and political divisions among those incarcerated met here and swirled around the garden’s controversial creator, incarcerated activist Harry Ueno.

Ueno, who had been born in Hawaii and educated in Japan, spoke out against alleged black marketing of food supplies meant for the incarcerated population and defied camp administrators by unionizing mess hall workers. On the night of December 5, 1942, six masked men beat Fred Tayama, an alleged FBI informer. Ueno, accused of being one of six, was arrested. The next day, hundreds of angry supporters converged here to protest the jailing of the popular, outspoken Ueno. The protests and tensions that followed erupted into the Manzanar “riot” on December 6, 1942.

Ancient Japan, the frontier West and the Owens Valley environment all met in this garden. Visualize the hug cottonwood stump, wagon wheels, old barrels, desert plants, and fish placed here. While sacred water flowing to a temple in Kyoto, Japan, have the garden its Japanese name, Otabe No Iki, the kitchen workers who built this garden called it “Three Sack Pond,” referring to the War Relocation Authority’s monthly limit of three sacks of cement per block for landscaping projects. This garden inspired incarceration Japanese Americans in other blocks to build similar gardens.

To hear Harry Y. Ueno talk about his involvement in the creation of Block 22 garden and it's importance, click here.