The 395 and Owens Valley-Eastern Sierra Region

Lol I got hammered with rain in Big Sur last week, in the middle of the night. We were in a campground -- it turns out they shut down most dispersed camping in the area lately, and not for reasons I might have guessed. So it was a great relief when we landed the last available spot, definitely the worst in the campground, but still pretty amazing to be camped on the coast at all. It was funny watching (well mostly hearing) all the tent campers scramble outside to throw up rain flies in the middle of the night as the skies let loose. Myself included.

I had been hoping we might catch some of the meteor shower, but not too hopeful either because the CA coast isn't known for clear skies at night... But I also knew that ISS would be making a brilliant pass just off the coast, right after sunset, so I set up the camera to see if I could catch it. I watched in growing disappointment as it tracked across the screen on my phone, invisible behind the clouds, unable to tell if there were any gaps overhead with our vision washed out by campfire's glow. But just before it was to disappear behind some trees, a most glorious star emerged from a gap above. ISS!



Looks like I might have actually caught a meteor at the top too... hard to say, probably just a plane. The range compression on the photo conceals how profoundly bright the ISS was amid the otherwise dim and featureless skies. It was an epic coda to a most beautiful sunset.



I would have given the sunset more attention, but it turned out I had just cooked finest salmon steaks I've ever had in my life. Another pleasant surprise -- I'm not much of a cook!

 

Last night was one of the first "mostly" clear nights in a long time...

 

Beautiful night last night!

 

I mentioned I ordered Friday or Saturday, can't remember. Coffee appeared on the doorstep this afternoon. Hand written packing list too. No idea how Peter made that happen...Opened the box and the house smells amazing.

 

Sweet man. I'm enjoying some Ethiopian Natural as I type this.

About those clear days. They're gone. SAT and SUN where really nice but monsoon is back. Dumping in Mammoth. Dark over Mt Humphrey and the Whites. Overcast in Bishop. Looks like it breaks back up THUR. I'll take all the liquid we can get at this point.

 

All we got here in the Bay Area was the humidity.

 

Some French Roast as a comparison and the Peru.

 

The weather was nice in the Buttermilks, Silver and Wyman Canyon on Saturday.

 

Glad you had a good time man.

That last photo is killing me. That wood has never been there. Guess I know what I gotta go do. lol

 

There was some debris flow on Wyman for sure.
I didn't take pics because I was busy planting my little tires...

 

We've mentioned Manzanar and talked a bit about it. Today, i was reading a friend's fb post and discovered there was a camp in Pacifica/Sharp Park area. For those who are not familiar, Pacifica is just south of San Francisco on the coast. The camp and any remnants are mostly gone now and this is the first mention of it that I've ever heard.

 

They were all over. Fucked up times.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese-American_internment_camps

 

The NPR article also wants to call them concentration camps, not internment camps. I’m not sure I can agree with that.

I know of the Tule Lake and a few other places but damn, this is twenty miles from home. Intermittent camps were discussed but Pacifica was never mentioned.

 

Not surprising NPR wants to use the title of concentration camp. While our internment camps are definitely a negative aspect of our national history they are vastly different than German concentration camps.

 

The term "concentration camp" originates from the 1870's and is defined by Webster's New Dictionary (which is the dictionary the NPR editorial staff use) as:

A prison camp in which political dissidents, members of minority ethnic groups, etc. are confined.

That is pretty much bang on what Manzanar was.

FDR himself specifically referred to them as "concentration camps" in the run up to WWII (discussions about them were ongoing well prior to the break out of war).

Harold Ickes (Sec. of Interior, 1933-1946) said in a newspaper interview in 1946:

We gave the fancy name of 'relocation centers' to these dust bowls, but they were concentration camps nonetheless.

Keep in mind this was of course specifically after the Nazi atrocities were well documented and Ickes himself was in charge of the DOI during the time the camps were active.

Finally, the term "internment" was applied to the detention of non-citizens and of course most of those "interred" were US citizens so it really seems that "internment camp" may be the misnomer.

So NPR does appear to have many solid reasons to use the term "concentration camp" even though it tends to bring to mind the notorious Nazi camps. The reality is the world has had many "concentration camps" of varying degrees of brutality over the years and the term is far more broad than just WWII Germany.

 

They want to change the narrative.

I think internment is correct for many reasons not the least of which is while people were being detained, they were mostly free to move about, to have “jobs” and definitely not treated as slave labor.

 

And further examples here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#Terminology_debate

Which include Truman clearly calling them "concentration camps" and notes in 1998 the American Jewish Committee and Japanese American National Museum released a joint statement stating:

A concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned not because of any crimes they have committed, but simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term 'concentration camp' was first used at the turn of the [20th] century in the Spanish American and Boer Wars. During World War II, America's concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi Germany's. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical experiments and summary executions; some were extermination centers with gas chambers. Six million Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust. Many others, including [Romani], Poles, homosexuals and political dissidents were also victims of the Nazi concentration camps. In recent years, concentration camps have existed in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia and Bosnia. Despite differences, all had one thing in common: the people in power removed a minority group from the general population and the rest of society let it happen.

 

First - I appreciate that you are all having this conversation in a civilized fashion, something that is becoming rarer today given our (social and mainstream) media influences.

Personally, I've always referred to Manzanar as an "internment" camp - likely because I saw it written on signage there, or because that's what it was referred to in a wikipedia article I read. Ken's posts got me thinking though - how *should* we refer to them? Obviously, this is something that others have thought about more than I - and I suspect any of us - have, given the entire/existing terminology debate on wikipedia. Certainly, we - as American's who did this terrible thing - would have a tendency (even as an unconscious bias) to "lighten" the terminology, to make ourselves look/feel "less bad."

I don't personally know anyone who was in one of the camps, but it seems to me that *they* should be the ones to determine the terminology used. Did they feel like they "were mostly free to move about, to have “jobs” and definitely not treated as slave labor"? Or did they feel like prisoners? My sense from the signage at Manzanar is that it was closer to the later - a bit like a minimum-to-medium security prison. For instance, I suspect that Martha Stewart's incarceration was nicer than Manzanar.

Given all that, and the quotes from the time, it seems reasonable to err on the side of calling them concentration camps if we are unsure. Certainly, a sign near the flagpole at Manzanar would support that train of thought: "May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism, and economic exploitation never emerge again."

 

A part of my belief is based on an informal chat with a guy named Richard. He was in the camp which is where I met him.

He said “life gave us lemons and we made
Lemonade”. As most know, many worked jobs that benefited the war effort. Like camo netting. They also grew vegetables to mitigate their impact on what was needed for the war effort. Some of the men volunteered for the armed services—I expect this was not an option available to many in a traditional concentration camp.

Richard is just one of many. There was a guy living in the east bay, Berkeley I think, who was more of an opponent. He was an artist and had been interviewed by KQED.
I’ve seen Ansel Adams photographs from Manzanar and read a couple of books in the subject.

Nothing can ever take away or excuse what happened and recreating places like Manzanar and talking about what did happen is important for other generations to learn from. And maybe those who lived there should be the ultimate arbiters of what it’s called. Idk.

 

https://youtu.be/sHtuu99YJg0