Manzanar pilgrimage takes on broad themes of democracy, civil rights
INDEPENDENCE, Calif. - Masako Miki came to this picturesque landscape of snow-tipped mountains and desert shrubs Saturday on a mission of remembrance.
Miki, raised an ocean away in the seaside Japanese city of Kobe, never learned about the painful history embedded in this windswept stretch of the Owens Valley.
Only after she began working for a Japanese magazine in Los Angeles nine years ago did she learn that 120,000 people of Japanese descent - two-thirds of them U.S. citizens - were evicted from their West Coast homes and incarcerated here at Manzanar and nine other camps during World War II.
She was horrified, shocked and remorseful that her country's attack on Pearl Harbor had helped fan the wartime hysteria and racism that led to the mass incarceration.
"I felt ashamed," Miki said. "As a human being, I feel responsible to learn history and not repeat it."
More than 2,000 people traveled to Manzanar on Saturday to
