This list of fiction and nonfiction books, compiled by Susan Conlon, MLIS and Kim Dorman, Community Engagement Coordinator, of Princeton Public Library, provides a range of perspectives on the issues raised by the POV documentary Manzanar Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust.

From the majestic peaks of the snow-capped Sierras to the parched valley of Payahuunadü, “the land of flowing water,” ``Manzanar Diverted:” poetically weaves together memories of intergenerational women. Native Americans, Japanese-American WWII incarcerees and environmentalists form an unexpected alliance to defend their land and water from Los Angeles.

ADULT NONFICTION

Bahr Meyers, Diane.The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kinetomi Embrey. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Based on extensive oral histories, The Unquiet Nisei recounts how Sue Kunitomi Embrey emerged from the WRA camp at Manzanar to become a leader of the Japanese American Redress Movement.

Brown, Daniel James. Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II.New York: Viking Press, 2021.
In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. Chronicling the lives of several Japanese Americans who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Brown also tells the story of these soldiers’ parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best—striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.

Lillquist, Karl. Imprisoned in the Desert: The Geography of World War II-Era, Japanese American Relocation Centers in the Western United States. Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and Central Washington University, 2007.
Evacuation of persons of Japanese descent from the U.S. West Coast to inland, arid sites in 1942 contains elements of all aspects of traditional geography, including physical, human, and regional sub-disciplines; however, few geographers have written on the topic. Further, little has been written about the landscapes in which the Japanese Americans were incarcerated, and how the evacuees interacted with the landscapes while they were incarcerated. This book focuses on the geography of each of the eight western U.S. relocation centers–Amache, Gila River, Heart Mountain, Manzanar, Minidoka, Poston, Topaz, and Tule Lake. Common to all in their western U.S. locations was aridity. All were located in arid or semi-arid environments. The Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas centers were excluded from this study because of their locations well east and in vastly different environments than the remainder of the sites. They were also the shortest-lived centers of the ten.

Miller, Char (editor). Wading Through the Past: Infrastructure, Indigeneity & Western Water Archives.Claremont: The Claremont Colleges Library, 2021.
Wading Through the Past is a collection of essays based on the 2021 Western Water Symposium, sponsored by The Claremont Colleges Library. An assortment of scholars, librarians, and advocates have virtually gathered to discuss the process of digitizing, making accessible, and using the Western Water Archives in the hope that we might better understand and improve our relationship to water. SPECIFICALLY noting “Payahǖǖnadǖ Water Story by Teri Red Ow”l

Omi, George. American Yellow.Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2016.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Omi family was uprooted from their home in San Francisco and incarcerated approximately 2,000 miles away at the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas. This memoir follows the story of the Omi family’s survival through the war and of their journey back to San Francisco to rebuild their lives in the aftermath.

Rotner Sakamoto, Pamela. Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds.New York: Harper Perennial, 2017.
Alternating between the American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima—as never told before in English—and provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, it is an portrait of a resilient family, an examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.

Umemoto, Hank. Manzanar to Mount Whitney: The Life and Times of a Lost Hiker.Berkley: Heyday, 2013.
Hank Umemoto was a young teenager when he was incarcerated at Manzanar during World War II. From inside the barracks, he was able to see Mount Whitney, and vowed that he would one day hike the mountain when he was a free man. Umemoto recalls stories from his life as a Japanese American in California both before and after the war, and chronicles his journey admiring Mount Whitney from inside Manzanar to finally reaching its summit decades later.

Yamashita, Karen Tei.Letters To Memory. Minneapolis, MN: Coffee House Press, 2017.
This memoir recollects the Japanese internment using archival materials from the Yamashita family as well as a series of epistolary conversations with composite characters representing a range of academic specialties.

Adult Fiction

Allende, Isabel. The Japanese Lover.London: Scribner, 2016.
In 1939, as Poland falls under the shadow of the Nazis and the world goes to war, young Alma Belasco's parents send her away to live in safety with an aunt and uncle in their opulent mansion in San Francisco. There she meets Ichimei Fukuda, the son of the family's Japanese gardener, and between them a tender love blossoms. Following Pearl Harbor, the two are cruelly pulled apart when Ichimei and his family - like thousands of Japanese Americans - are declared enemies by the US government and relocated to internment camps. Throughout their lifetimes, Alma and Ichimei reunite again and again, but theirs is a love they are forever forced to hide from the world.

Ford, Jamie. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. New York: Ballantine Books, 2019. ?
Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.

Guterson, David. Snow Falling on Cedars.New York: Vintage, 1994.
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder.

Hirahara, Naomi. Clark and Division. New York, NY: Soho Crime, 2021.
Based on a true crime that terrorized the resettled Japanese American community in Chicago, and inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime fiction plot with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories.

Itani, Frances. Requiem.New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2012.
In 1942 the government removed Bin Okuma's family from their home on British Columbia’s west coast and forced them into internment camps. Fifty years later, after his wife’s sudden death, Bin travels across the country to find the biological father who has been lost to him. Both running from grief and driving straight toward it, Bin must ask himself whether he truly wants to find First Father, the man who made a fateful decision that almost destroyed his family all those years ago. With his wife’s persuasive voice in his head and the echo of their love in his heart, Bin embarks on an unforgettable journey into his past that will throw light on a dark time in history.

McMorris, Kristina, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves.New York: Kensington, Reprint Edition, 2019.
Los Angeles, 1941. Violinist Maddie Kern falls in love with her brother’s handsome best friend, Lane Morimoto. The day after Pearl Harbor is bombed, they elope, and in the eyes of a fearful nation, Lane becomes an enemy. An authentic, moving testament to love, forgiveness and the enduring music of the human spirit.

Okada, John. No-No Boy.Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014.
This 1956 novel, by Seattle native John Okada, is considered the first Japanese American novel and an Asian American literary classic. Its title comes from the answers many Japanese American men gave to a government questionnaire administered during World War II: would they serve in the armed forces and would they swear loyalty to the U.S.

Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine.New York: Anchor Books, 2003.
This novel tells the story of a Japanese American family that is evicted from their home in California and incarcerated at a camp in Utah. It is divided into five sections that are each narrated by a different family member, and gives a vivid and multidimensional account of the experiences in the camps.

Shimotakahara, Leslie. After the Bloom.Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2017.
Rita Taekmitsu, a single mother in 1980s Toronto, embarks on a search for her mother, Lily, who has gone missing. Over the course of her investigation, Rita begins to uncover secrets related to her mother’s incarceration at a camp in California during World War II. the family’s immigration to Canada after the war, and the mysterious father she has never known. Told in alternating storylines, this novel portrays a family confronting and coming to terms with their past.

Non-Fiction For Younger Readers

Hesse, Monica. The War Outside.City: Publisher, 2016.
Haruko and Margot meet at the high school in Crystal City, a "family internment camp" for those accused of colluding with the enemy. The teens discover that they are polar opposites in so many ways, except for one that seems to override all the others: the camp is changing them, day by day and piece by piece. Haruko finds herself consumed by fear for her soldier brother and distrust of her father, who she knows is keeping something from her. And Margot is doing everything she can to keep her family whole as her mother's health deteriorates and her rational, patriotic father becomes a man who distrusts America and fraternizes with Nazis. With everything around them falling apart, Margot and Haruko find solace in their growing, secret friendship. But in a prison the government has deemed full of spies, can they trust anyone--even each other?

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar.New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston chronicles her family’s experiences being forcefully removed from their home and confined to Manzanar, one of the sites of camps established by the U.S. government to detain Japanese Americans. The story follows a young Jeanne and her family during their years at the camp, and also recounts their experiences back in society after being released. This memoir, released in 1973 is one of the earliest published firsthand accounts of the Japanese American incarceration.

Hughes, Kiku. Displacement.New York: First Second (Illustrated edition), 2020.
A teenager is pulled back in time to witness her grandmother’s experiences in World War II-era Japanese internment camps.

Lindquist, Heather C., Editor. Children of Manzanar,a co-publication by Heyday and Manzanar History Association, Berkeley, Calif, 2012.
This book captures the experiences of some of the nearly four thousand children and young adults held at Manzanar during World War II under Executive Order 9066. An act that authorized the U.S. Army to undertake the rapid removal of more than one hundred thousand Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast.

Marrin, Albert. Uprooted: The Japanese American Experience During World War II. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2016.
Just seventy-five years ago, the American government did something that most would consider unthinkable today: it rounded up over 100,000 of its own citizens based on nothing more than their ancestry and, suspicious of their loyalty, kept them in concentration camps for the better part of four years. How could this have happened? Uprooted takes a close look at the history of racism in America and follows the treacherous path that led one of our nation's most beloved presidents to make this decision. Meanwhile, it illuminates the history of Japan and its own struggles with racism and xenophobia, which led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ultimately tying the two countries together.

Mochizuki, Kenneth. Baseball Saved Us.New York: Lee & Low Books, 2018.
Shorty and his family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, have been forced to relocate from their homes to a camp after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Fighting the heat, dust, and freezing cold nights of the desert, Shorty and the others at the camp need something to look forward to, even if only for nine innings. So they build a playing field, and in this unlikely place, a baseball league is formed. Surrounded by barbed-wire fences and guards in towers, Shorty soon finds that he is playing not only to win, but to gain dignity and self-respect as well.

Matsuda, Mary. Looking Like The Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese American Internment Camps.City: New Sage Press, 2005.
This memoir, told from the heart and mind of the now 80 year old Mary Matsuda Gruenwald recalls when she was 16 and evacuated to an internment camp with her family.

Oppenheim, Joanne. Dear Miss Breed: True Stories of the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II and a Librarian Who Made a Difference.New York: Scholastic NonFiction, 2006.
In the early 1940's, Clara Breed was the children's librarian at the San Diego Public Library. But she was also a friend to dozens of Japanese American children and teens when war broke out in December of 1941. The story of what happened to these American citizens is movingly told through letters that her young friends wrote to Miss Breed during their internment. This remarkable librarian and humanitarian served as a lifeline to these imprisoned young people, and was brave enough to speak out against a shameful chapter in American history.

Takei, George with Justin Eisinger. They Called Us Enemy.San Diego: Top Shelf Productions, 2019.
In 1942, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was sent to ‘relocation centers’They Called Us Enemy is Takei’s first hand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds of his astonishing future.

Uchida, Yoshiko. The Invisible Thread (In My Own Words).New York: Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, 1991.
Children's author, Yoshiko Uchida, describes growing up in Berkeley, California, as a Nisei, second generation Japanese American, and her family's internment in a Nevada concentration camp during World War II.

Fiction For Younger Readers

Bunting, Eve. So Far From the Sea.New York: Clarion Books, 1998. When seven-year-old Laura and her family visit Grandfather's grave at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, the Japanese American child leaves behind a special symbol.

Chee, Traci. We Are Not Free.New York: Clarion Books, 2020.
The collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second -generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.

Dallas, Sandra. Red Berries, White Clouds, Blue Sky.Ann Arbor, MI: Sleeping Bear Press, 2014.
After Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese, twelve-year-old Tomi and her Japanese-American family are split up and forced to leave their California home to live in internment camps in New Mexico and Colorado.

Kadohata, Cynthia. A Place to Belong.City: Athenium, 2019.
At the end of World War II Hanako’s parents renounce their citizenship and move to Japan, a country that Hanako has never known. Life is hard and Hanako feels like she might crack under the pressure. But just because something is broken, doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.Cracks can make room for gold, her grandfather explains when he tells her about the tradition of kintsukuroi--fixing broken objects with gold lacquer, making them stronger and more beautiful than ever. As she struggles to adjust to find her place in a new world, Hanako will find that the gold can come in many forms, and family may be hers.

Kadohata, Cynthia. Weedflower.City: Publisher, 2009.
Twelve-year-old Sumiko feels her life has been made up of two parts: before Pearl Harbor and after it. The good part and the bad part. Raised on a flower farm in California, Sumiko is used to being the only Japanese girl in her class. Even when the other kids tease her, she always has had her flowers and family to go home to.That all changes after the horrific events of Pearl Harbor. Other Americans start to suspect that all Japanese people are spies for the emperor, even if, like Sumiko, they were born in the United States! Weedflower is the story of the rewards and challenges of a friendship across the racial divide, as well as the based-on-real-life story of how the meeting of Japanese Americans and Native Americans changed the future of both.

Mochizuki, Ken. Beacon Hill Boys.New York: Scholastic Press, 2002.
Like other Japanese American families in the Beacon Hill area of Seattle, 16-year-old Dan Inagaki's parents expect him to be an example of the "model minority." But unlike Dan's older brother, with his 4.0 GPA and Ivy League scholarship, Dan is tired of being called "Oriental" by his teachers, and sick of feeling invisible; Dan's growing self-hatred threatens his struggle to claim an identity. Sharing his anger and confusion are his best friends, Jerry Ito, Eddie Kanagae, and Frank Ishimoto, and together these Beacon Hill Boys fall into a spiral of rebellion that is all too all-American.

Sepahban, Louis. Paper Wishes.New York: Square Fish, Reprint Edition, 2017.
Ten-year-old Manami did not realize how peaceful her family's life on Bainbridge Island was until the day it all changed. It's 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are Japanese American, which means that the government says they must leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the desert. Manami is sad to go, but even worse is that they are going to have to give her and her grandfather's dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care of. Manami decides to sneak Yujiin under her coat and gets as far as the mainland before she is caught and forced to abandon Yujiin. She and her grandfather are devastated, but Manami clings to the hope that somehow Yujiin will find his way to the camp and make her family whole again. It isn't until she finds a way to let go of her guilt that Manami can reclaim the piece of herself that she left behind and accept all that has happened to her family.

Sugiura, Misa. This Time Will Be Different.New York: Harper Teen, 2020.
Katsuyamas never quit—but seventeen-year-old CJ doesn’t even know where to start. She’s never lived up to her mom’s type A ambition, and she’s perfectly happy just helping her aunt, Hannah, at their family’s flower shop.

She doesn’t buy into Hannah’s romantic ideas about flowers and their hidden meanings, but when it comes to arranging the perfect bouquet, CJ discovers a knack she never knew she had. A skill she might even be proud of. Then her mom decides to sell the shop—to the family who swindled CJ’s grandparents when thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during WWII. Soon a rift threatens to splinter CJ’s family, friends, and their entire Northern California community; and for the first time, CJ has found something she wants to fight for.

Uchida, Yoshiko. The Bracelet.New York: Puffin Books, 1996.
Emi and her family are being sent to a place called an internment camp, where all Japanese-Americans must go. The year is 1942. The United States and Japan are at war. Seven-year-old Emi doesn't want to leave her friends, her school, her house; yet as her mother tells her, they have no choice, because they are Japanese-American. For her mother's sake, Emi doesn't say how unhappy she is. But on the first day of camp, when Emi discovers she has lost her heart bracelet, she can't help wanting to cry. "How will I ever remember my best friend?" she asks herself.

Uchida Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz.Berkeley, CA: Heyday, 2015.
Based on Yoshiko Uchida's personal experiences, this is the moving story of one girl's struggle to remain brave during the Japanese internment of World War II. In a bleak and dusty prison camp, eleven-year-old Yuki and her family experience both true friendship and heart-wrenching tragedy. Journey to Topaz explores the consequences of prejudice and the capacities of the human spirit. First published in 1971, this book is now a much loved and widely read classic

Delve Even Deeper

Ed. Abolition Collective. Abolishing Carceral Society (Abolition: Journal of Insurgency Politics 1).Brooklyn,: Common Notions, 2018. '
This collection presents contemporary voices in the revolutionary abolitionist movement with a creative range of approaches to dismantling interlocking institutions of oppression and transforming the world.

Drinnon, Richard. Keeper of the Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism.Berkeley,: University of California Press, 1989.
Analyzing the career of Dillon S. Myer, Director of the War Relocation Authority during WWII and Commissioner of the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 1950-53, Richard Drinnon shows that the pattern for the Japanese internment was set a century earlier by the removal, confinement, and scattering of Native Americans.

Ewan, Rebecca Fish. A Land Between: Owens Valley, California (Center Books on Space, Place, and TIme).Baltimore,: Johns Hopkins Press, 2000.
A unique landscape history, A Land Between explores the central idea of how people's preconceptions and perceptions of a place―in this case, Owens Valley―influence their interventions on the land. Rebecca Fish Ewan draws on primary sources, oral histories, and conversations, offering a story that reaches beyond the oft-told tale of water wars with Los Angeles. Ewan's gentle and poetic essays, illustrated with historical images and her own photographs of the region, provide a complex, multifaceted perspective on the land, the history, and the people of Owens Valley.

Freeman, Andrew. Manzanar, Architecture Double.Monica, CA,: Ram Publications & Dist;, 2006.
A richly illustrated display of history, memory, and the contingencies of remembrance. Photographer Andrew Freeman’s [Manzanar] Architecture Double is a work based on mapping, tracing and recovering through photography the buildings which originally made up Manzanar, the notorious Japanese-American internment camp in California’s Owens Valley. At the end of World War II, the federal government moved quickly to dismantle the camp, selling off hundreds of the barracks to anyone who would move them to another location. But even though the camp itself “disappeared,” the buildings live on. Manzanar documents the current condition and location of many buildings used at the camp, and in the process expresses how man indelibly layers the land with history, landscape and architecture. As Matthew Coolidge, director at the Center of Land Use and Interpretation, writes, “Each of the buildings is an architectural face that speaks of the assimilation of this dark side or the American story

Hirahara, Naoimi. Life After Manzanar.Berkley: Heyday, 2018.
Life After Manzanar delves into “Resettlement”: the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given twenty-five dollars and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of housing and jobs. Hirahara and Lindquist weave new and archival oral histories into an engaging narrative that illuminates the lives of former internees in the postwar era, both in struggle and unlikely triumph. Readers will appreciate the painstaking efforts that rebuilding required, and will feel inspired by the activism that led to redress and restitution-and that built a community that even now speaks out against other racist agendas.

Madley, Benjamin. An American Genocide: The United States and the Carlifornia Indian Catastrophe, 1846-1873.New Haven,: Yale University Press, 2017.
Between 1846 and 1873, California’s Indian population plunged from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000. Benjamin Madley is the first historian to uncover the full extent of the slaughter, the involvement of state and federal officials, the taxpayer dollars that supported the violence, indigenous resistance, who did the killing, and why the killings ended. This deeply researched book is a comprehensive and chilling history of an American genocide.

Mansen, Arthur A. Barbed Voices: Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese American Social Disaster (Nikkei in the Americas).Boulder,: University Press of Colorado, 2018.
Barbed Voices is an anthology of articles written by the Japanese American historian, Arthur Hansen, updated and annotated for contemporary context.

Meyers, Bahr Diana. Viola Martinez, California Paiute: Living in Two Worlds.Norman, OK,: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010.
The life story of Viola Martinez, an Owens Valley Paiute Indian of eastern California, extends over nine decades of the twentieth century. Viola experienced forced assimilation in an Indian boarding school, overcame racial stereotypes to pursue a college degree, and spent several years working at a Japanese American internment camp during World War II. Finding herself poised uncertainly between Indian and white worlds, Viola was determined to turn her marginalized existence into an opportunity for personal empowerment. In Viola Martinez, California Paiute, Diana Meyers Bahr recounts Viola’s extraordinary life story and examines her strategies for dealing with acculturation.

Piper, Karen Fname. Left in the Dust: How Race and Politics Created a Human and Environmental Tragedy in LA.New York,: St. Martin’s Press, 2006.
To get water to Los Angeles, the Owens River was diverted and Owens Lake dried out. The dry lakebed now contains a dust saturated with toxic heavy metals, which are blown away from the lake and inhaled by people throughout the Midwest, causing major health issues. Karen Piper,, one of the people who grew up breathing that dust takes a look at how this happened and how people outside of urban areas are forgotten or sacrificed when it comes to urban growth.

Reisner, Marc. Cadillac Desert: The American Desert and Its Disappearing Water, Revised Edition.New York,: Penguin Books, 1993.
The story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious resource: water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage.

Robinson, Alexander. The Spoils of Dust: Reinventing the Lake that Made Los Angeles.Redondo Beach, CA,: Applied Research and Design, 2018.
Part environmental history, landscape atlas, and speculative design research, The Spoils of Dust examines the unlikely reinvention of Owens Lake by the city that dried it. Once the third-largest lake in California and among the world’s greatest sources of dust, for decades the dried Owens Lake was merely a footnote to the most notorious water grab in modern history. Now, the desert lake has been reassembled―not refilled―to redeem its lost value without returning Los Angeles’s main water supply.

Wehrey, Jane. Manzanar (Images of America).Mt. Pleasant, SC,: Arcadia Publishing, 2008.
East of the rugged Sierra Nevada in California's Owens Valley lies Manzanar. Founded in 1910 as a fruit-growing colony, it was named in Spanish for the fragrant apple orchards that once filled its spectacularly scenic landscape. Owens Valley Paiute lived there first, followed by white homesteaders and ranchers. But with the onset of World War II came a new identity as the first of 10 "relocation centers" hastily built in 1942 to house 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them American citizens, removed from the West Coast. In the face of upheaval and loss, Manzanar's 10,000 confined residents created parks, gardens, and a functioning wartime community within the camp's barbed-wire-enclosed square mile of flimsy barracks. Today Manzanar National Historic Site commemorates this and all of Manzanar's unique communities.

Wehrey, Jane. The Owens Valley (Images of America.Mt. Pleasant, SC,: Arcadia Publishing, 2013.
The Owens Valley is a bold and beautiful land where rugged alpine peaks tower over the deep trough of high desert that John Muir called "a country of wonderful contrasts." Inhabiting a rich and complex past are native people, miners, cattlemen, farmers, and city builders who laid claim, often violently, to its resources. By 1913, Owens River water was flowing south through the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and from the long and bitter conflicts that followed emerged an Owens Valley future far removed from the agrarian Eden envisioned by 19th-century pioneers. Today, unparalleled recreational opportunities draw millions of visitors annually to this "long brown land" even as reminders of a quintessential Western past linger in its open vistas, epic landscape, and enduring traditions.