Manzanar: Block 14, Barracks 1

Block 14, Barracks 1 Exhibit

NPS

Quick Facts

Location:

southeast corner of Block 14

Amenities

4 listed

Accessible Rooms, Audio Description, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits, Wheelchair Accessible

Crowded Quarters

“When we first got there, they put two bachelor men with us . . . So my dad put a sheet around our bed.”
— Miyeko Ishikawa Tamura

“All the comforts of home were stripped away.”
— George Matsumoto

On March 7, 1942, Lieutenant General John DeWitt announced that the US Army would build a “reception center” for Japanese Americans at Manzanar. Two weeks later, the first people forced from their Los Angeles homes arrived here to a chaotic construction zone. There weren’t enough barracks, and some were without windows, doors, or roofs. The green lumber used for the buildings shrank quickly in the dry air, creating gaps and knotholes.

“We had scorpions coming through the hole, and they would get in our shoes,” Ujinobu Niwa recalled. “So we had to shake our shoes to make sure that we don't get a scorpion bite.”

Newlyweds John and Kiyoko Young shared a 20-by-25-foot room with other families. “We had a little corner, just a bed in there, that's all, sat on the bed,” John recalled. “One family had about three or
four kids, and one had one, and us . . . we were all thrown in together.”

George Maeda remembered creating separate “rooms” with sheets. “When you walked in, the first thing you saw were a lot of bedsheets hanging,” he said.

Each residential block elected a Block Manager, whose office was in Barracks 1, Room 1. He worked as the block’s liaison with the camp administration. People came to the office to complain, borrow a sewing machine or sports equipment, buy items from catalogs, and get mail, soap, light bulbs, even toilet paper.