Manzanar Hospital

Manzanar Hospital, Ansel Adams, 1943

Ansel Adams

Quick Facts

Location:

northwest corner

Amenities

2 listed

Benches/Seating, Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

“Here people are all scared, worried, and . . . you can’t tell them not to worry because you’re in the same position . . . You don’t know what the outcome of the war is going to be. It’s just impossible to kind of consul them. You have to console them.”
Dr. Masako Kusayanagi Miura

The dust, poor food, and crowded conditions of Manzanar’s early weeks heightened fears of serious illness and epidemic. Rose Bannai Kitahara “started working as a nurse’s aid for the Public Health Department, going from barrack to barrack in the howling dust storms, and around open ditches to urge residents to complete their typhoid shots.”

Initially, doctors treated patients in a single barracks without running water, adequate supplies, or equipment. Dr. Masako Kusayanagi Miura recalled only “five doctors and ten thousand people . . . we had old people, young people, women, children, everybody.”

In July 1942, patients, staff, and equipment finally moved into a new 250-bed hospital complex built here. In sixteen connected buildings, the hospital housed operating rooms, laboratories, pharmacy, dental and eye clinics, a morgue, and staff quarters. Over a period of 3 ½ years, the hospital staff treated more than 70,000 cases.

Most hospital employees were Japanese American. The hospital offered classes in nursing, stenography, and other fields. “When I first went to Manzanar hospital to work, I didn’t know any medical terminology,” said Mae Kageyama Kakehashi. After the war, she continued her career as a medical stenographer.

Life began and ended at Manzanar. Doctors and nurses delivered 541 babies. Of the 11,070 people incarcerated here, 150 died.

To hear George Tsuyoshi Iwamoto talk about having his tonsils out at the Manzanar Hospital, click here.