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“The tower represents what the whole thing was about: imprisonment, loss of civil liberties, loss of identity. The tower was the only icon-that and the barbed wire."
- Sue Kunitomi Embrey, at the 2005 dedication of the replica tower
From 1942 to 1945, eight US Army guard towers loomed over the more than 11,000 Japanese Americans held in Manzanar. For most of that time, US Military Police manned the towers, a visual reminder that the unconstitutionally incarcerated people were not allowed to leave without permission.
“The barbed wire... separated us from the rest of the world," Shi Nomura remembered. “With the shouted warnings from the armed guards on the towers, we learned to keep our distance."
A 1942 newsreel claimed that the Japanese Americans were not prisoners but “merely dislocated people-the unwounded casualties of war." However, even children couldn’t help but notice that the MPs aimed their weapons inward toward them.
John Tateishi was a toddler in Manzanar. His mother walked him to the barbed wire fence and warned him to stay away from it and the towers. “As she was telling me this, I was looking up at this guard... he had a rifle," Tateishi said. “I was old enough to know when a soldier has a rifle, he uses it for one thing."
After Manzanar War Relocation Center closed on Nov. 21, 1945, the guard towers were removed, yet they remain a powerful icon of confinement.
Toyo Miyatake took this photo of guard tower number 4 on the west edge of Manzanar. The concrete footings remain at that site.
Manzanar National Historic Site
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* manzanar national historic site
* japanese american incarceration
Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service
