Boots on the Ground: Archaeology and Community at Manzanar
Cindy Olnick 0:00
Today on Save As…
Tia Morita 0:01
It’s just a way to, you know, remember my family’s history, to respect this place, pay homage to what happened here, and to restore and keep going the memory of Manzanar so that this never happens again.
Cindy Olnick 0:22
Welcome to Save As, a podcast that glimpses the future of heritage conservation through the work of graduate students at the University of Southern California. I’m Cindy Olnick.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:32
And I’m Trudi Sandmeier. So Cindy.
Cindy Olnick 0:35
Yes Trudi.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:34
Today, we’re gonna take a little trip up north to the Owens Valley to visit Manzanar.
Cindy Olnick 0:35
I love road trips.
Trudi Sandmeier 0:36
Who doesn’t love a good road trip? For those of you who might not be familiar with Manzanar, it’s actually one of the first of the ten incarceration camps that were created during World War Two. The federal government called these war relocation centers, which was a sort of euphemistic term for what was, in fact, a place where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during the war. Some people call them internment camps. Other people call them concentration camps. It’s about 200 miles north of Los Angeles. And over the course of the war, there were over 10,000 people incarcerated on the site. There’s a whole generation of people that were affected by these camps.
Cindy Olnick 1:31
So Manzanar was designated 30 years ago as a National Historic Site. And the National Park Service has a volunteer community archaeology project, where volunteers just come from all over the country and help to excavate and conserve the site. So in late March, they were able to do this project again, for the first time since the pandemic shutdown. And it happened to be the 80th anniversary of the first incarcerees arriving in March 1942.
Trudi Sandmeier 2:05
So the cool thing here is that our students, we always try and get them out into the field to do stuff. And we’re teaching a class called Cultural Resource Management this semester, which is all about archaeology. And so the students went up for the weekend, and as part of their coursework, worked on this community archaeology project, and so it was super, super immersive experience on site.
Cindy Olnick 2:32
So about 90 people worked on the site of the former hospital this time, including Save As producer Willa Seidenberg, who is also a current heritage conservation student. And we happen to have her here with us today. Special guest Willa!
Willa Seidenberg 2:48
Hey, guys. Nice to be here.
Cindy Olnick 2:51
So you actually went on this trip? What was it like?
Willa Seidenberg 2:54
It was amazing. As I have told many people, it was actually life changing. I’ve been to Manzanar several times as a visitor. I didn’t ever feel the way I felt during this trip, because you’re there, you’re living it, you’re looking at the old photos, you’re experiencing the elements. We had a park ranger that came to give us a little lecture, and she had to stop because the wind was so bad, she couldn’t even hold on to her papers. Part of it is that you spend the weekend in intense physical labor, which felt really good. You get to meet these amazing people who are all there to do something positive and useful. And you get the sense of really what happened there. So it really reoriented my thinking about engaging in these kinds of sites and making a difference to restore it so that visitors can come and really see what happened there.
Trudi Sandmeier 4:02
To our great benefit, Willa served as our ace roving reporter, gathering some interviews from some of the community members from all over the country who came. And so we have some really great audio to share with you from her reporting on site, which is exciting. We also spoke with Mary Ringhoff who is the instructor for the course that took students to the site. She is an added extra bonus alumna of the Heritage Conservation Program at USC and now she’s a professor.
Cindy Olnick 4:35
And Trudi also spoke with another current student, Dani Velazco, who was on the trip. So there’s a lot in store for you listeners. Let’s get to it.
[music]
Trudi Sandmeier 4:48
Welcome Mary to Save As, and thanks so much for coming to chat with me today.
Mary Ringhoff 4:53
Thanks for having me.
Trudi Sandmeier 4:54
What is your background?
Mary Ringhoff 4:56
My background is in archaeology. My specialization has always been historical archaeology, broadly defined as archaeology that incorporates the study of documentation and written records, in addition to the artifacts and features and sites of the archaeological record.
Trudi Sandmeier 5:14
Tell me a little bit about your class.
Mary Ringhoff 5:16
I envisioned this class as having a couple of different purposes. One is just to bring up cultural resource management as really the most common way that archaeology is practiced in the U.S. A lot of times people think of archaeology and they think of ancient sites and the Old World. And a lot of people when I was working full time in archaeology, they would ask me, ‘oh, so you go to Egypt, or you go to Israel, and you do digs there.’ And I would say, No, I’m working in the middle of Nevada, doing ground survey, because a mine wants to expand their property. So part of it was just getting the word out about the reality of archeological research in our country, specifically. And then also, I really wanted to highlight the importance of archaeology of cultural resources that are less visible, both surface and subsurface, and how they’re such an important part of heritage conservation. Because, as you know, our field historically focused more on the really charismatic, iconic architecture, the built environment, as opposed to other kinds of sites and properties.
Trudi Sandmeier 6:31
How did the Manzanar field trip come about?
Mary Ringhoff 6:34
I’m always interested in doing little bits of archaeology here and there in between my day job doing architectural history. So I talked to the folks there and got their contact information. And I was all signed up to go and volunteer on my own, March of 2020, when the world then shut down, and the program didn’t have any sessions for two years. So this year, as soon as I found out that it was happening, I contacted Jeff Burton, who is the cultural resources manager there at Manzanar, and I asked him if they had room for not just me, but my whole class. And they did.
It’s already a very field trip heavy class, because I think the most important thing is the boots on the ground, like just really being able to spend time on a site, get a feel for it, get a feel for what you’re looking for, and kind of gain your archaeology eye where you’re looking for different kinds of resources than you might normally be looking for. And so I just thought this would be such a good opportunity to help the park out, while also providing this really valuable learning experience. It was such a treat to be able to do archaeology in the interest of improving interpretation and the visitor experience as opposed to compliance with preservation law. And checking off each box that you need to check off to make sure you’re following the law. That’s the context in which most CRM work is done. And most of my experience was in doing those kinds of projects. So it felt very special to be looking at exposing, we’re exposing this bench feature and these steps in front of what was the hospital building at the camp. So it’s more visible and more accessible for future visitors, and they can have a more meaningful experience.
Trudi Sandmeier 8:16
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to imagine things that you can’t see. So even revealing remnants calls to mind a sort of different experience. And if you can see a historic picture and then see that same elements still present in the landscape it helps you visualize what it must have been like, even a little bit more than you currently can.
Mary Ringhoff 8:37
Yeah, exactly. And, the archaeologists from the park who were supervising the work, they had a binder of historic photos of the hospital area that we could look at. And so when when we were excavating those steps we could see, and there’s also this bench that’s got these rocks as a base. And then on the top, it’s this faux wood slab that’s actually made of concrete, and there was this master stonemason by the name of Ryozo Kado, who did a lot of this kind of work at Manzanar. Really fascinating faux wood work. And he also designed the obelisk that’s the main monument in the Manzanar cemetery that you see in all the pictures.
Trudi Sandmeier 9:15
If there’s one picture of Manzanar that people know, it’s either the front gate, or that obelisk in the cemetery.
Mary Ringhoff 9:21
So being able to see those historic photos and you know, see that we’re uncovering this bench that this person who was incarcerated at this site made, and then Ansel Adams took pictures of it when he took his series of photos of people in Manzanar, and there’s a picture of a couple of people sitting on that very bench, and so you can really visualize what it was like then and what it’s like now, is not all that different.
Trudi Sandmeier 9:49
It’s totally amazing. Time travel. There were other people working on the site, not just you guys. So what kinds of folks were there?
Mary Ringhoff 9:58
There were people who have been volunteering for this program for many years, sort of the veterans of this program. And then there were people like us who were showing up for the first time. A really interesting mix and group of people and just all the nicest people. It was it just felt good to be around them.
Trudi Sandmeier 10:16
So now I want to turn to Dani Velazco, who is one of our students in the Heritage Conservation Program. So welcome to Save As Dani.
Daniela Velazco 10:25
Thank you, happy to be here.
Trudi Sandmeier 10:27
Tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from? What are you studying at USC? What’s your story?
Daniela Velazco 10:32
I grew up in Los Angeles. I thought I wanted to be a children’s psychologist. I was really into alternative modes of healing, and very interested in outdoor education. I worked as an experiential educator for a couple of years. I realized how necessary time outside is for children and for adults, and how outdoor space isn’t accessible for everybody. So I thought landscape architecture would be a great way to create more of these spaces. So moved back to L.A. and started the masters of landscape architecture at USC. And through coursework, I somehow fell into heritage conservation.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:20
That happens to a lot of us.
Daniela Velazco 11:21
Right? As an educator, I love telling stories, I see myself as a storyteller. I really love listening to people and hearing you know, where they come from, and what’s important to them. And so, now I am a dual degree, landscape architecture and heritage conservation student.
Trudi Sandmeier 11:40
What has this class been like for you? As a landscape architect, thinking about this aspect of our field?
Daniela Velazco 11:46
What has stood out to me and what I feel like I can relate to through my landscape architecture background, is getting to know a site by spending time on it. I’m very interested on the boots on the ground aspect of just going to a place and walking it slowly, paying attention and recording everything and anything you see. I think it’s a simple but powerful way to understand a place,
Trudi Sandmeier 12:15
Right and thinking of what’s not only above ground, but what’s below ground.
Daniela Velazco 12:19
Yeah. And also being aware of how it affects other people. So I think archaeology does a really good job at like, thinking about its effect before actually touching the earth because it realizes that once you do something, there’s no going back.
Trudi Sandmeier 12:36
Certainly there was nothing more boots on the ground than this trip to Manzanar for the weekend to do archaeological work at the Manzanar Historic Site. What was it like being at Manzanar?
Daniela Velazco 12:51
Just arriving to Manzanar is a completely different experience than being in Los Angeles. It’s surprising how innately beautiful and oppressive the landscape is. You’re in this valley, surrounded by the Eastern Sierras or these jagged, snowy mountains. I got there a little bit early and went to Alabama Hills, and it was super windy, couldn’t really open your eyes. And I remember thinking like, I am so happy I don’t live here. You know, like I can’t wait to get back in my car. I can’t wait to get into the hotel room, like this doesn’t feel habitable. So, when we arrived to Manzanar, I kind of felt a physiological kind of empathy for the Asian American people who were interned in the area. It’s definitely a different experience than like reading about it in a textbook or hearing about it.
Trudi Sandmeier 13:55
What kinds of things did you do while you were there over the weekend?
Daniela Velazco 13:58
There were three main activities. One was restoring a historic rock wall that had been built and kind of buried and it was broken due to flooding. So there was a little bit of the original rock wall and we were building up on top of it. And then another activity was clearing brush in the old hospital site. And the last activity was actually digging soil out of the ground and putting it on the screen and seeing if there’s anything of interest that comes up and taking in and writing it down. And they were also digging out these covered up steps. Every morning, we would come together in a circle and it was a pretty big group. I would say maybe 50 people on the first day, maybe more, and everyone would go around and say their name and where they’re from and why they’re here. Everyone had a very different background and very different motivation for being there.
Trudi Sandmeier 15:02
So now we’re going to listen to some of the voices of the folks who were there over the weekend, and hear a little bit about their stories.
Tia Morita 15:10
My name is Tia Morita, and I’m from Los Angeles. I’m Yonsei, fourth generation Japanese American. My grandparents and my aunt, uncle and my mother were interned here at Manzanar during the war. My mother was actually born here.
Lucy Fisher 15:28
My name is Lucy Fisher, I am from San Francisco. I am Japanese American, but born and raised in Honolulu. My family did not have to go to the camps. But, of course, living in San Francisco, I’ve been hearing about it off and on. And thought I should, since I retired, you know, learn a little more about this.
Lynne Bucher 15:55
My name is Lynne Bucher. I’m from Minnesota. I am here because I worked here many years ago, in the early ’90s, after this became a National Historic Site, and we surveyed and recorded the entire property that was designated.
Lucy Fisher 16:19
The first day was here, I cleared brush. That was hard work. The brush here is in the ground, it’s old, it’s brittle. It was hard work. But, you know, at the end of the day, you look around and you say, Damn, we did all of that.
Lynne Bucher 16:41
There’s a natural slope in the landscape. So there’s a lower area and a higher area. So they built a rock wall along that, I think to stop erosion between the two areas. And then they sort of landscaped below the wall, and they made a bench out of concrete and then they made it, stained it and made it to look like wood. And it is also on some rocks just in front of the walls. There’s a lot of photos of people on the bench and near the bench there is a set of stairs that went to this main area. The stairs are like right in here. It’s very photogenic.
Lucy Fisher 17:19
Yesterday we just started realizing that the steps were there. I said that’s what I’m going to do tomorrow. So that’s why when we did our little orientation, get to know you this morning, I said, I’m for the steps get out of my way.
Brushing away the dirt and exposing the stairs. From the photos there were six stairs. And when we came, there were just these three, and so we’re gonna do five and six today. And you did you hear that? The tap tap tap? That’s where the last stairs. Oh you can hear it.
Lynne Bucher 18:01
We find a lot of debris from tearing apart structures. Behind you there’s a rubble pile where they tried to harvest metal from some water pipes and they’ve torn it up and then they made a big hole and then they just tried to throw stuff in it. Boulders and footers and whatever they had to try and pretend we’ll make this flat. We have found marbles here. So the marbles are the most fun. So you know there’s kids around here playing. There’s been some, a couple of medical things, a couple little paper clips. I mean you know, this is not a living area. This is like a workspace. Someone did find the bottom of like maybe tooth powder bottle. You could see the word tooth in the glass, it was just a fragment of it and we found one little ampule that was complete where the top had been broken off and the contents were taken out.
Lucy Fisher 18:54
When you find your first nail, HOORAY! And then you find a pin or anything, a piece of metal and it’s, it’s an addiction.
Willa Seidenberg 19:06
It’s like a treasure hunt.
Lucy Fisher 19:07
It is exactly. Those buckets, they’re our treasure buckets.
Tia Morita 19:15
When people first arrive you look very clean, your clothes are clean, your jeans are clean. Within the first 20 minutes or so, you’re brown, dusty brown. You might have some dirt lines caked on your face in different areas. You slowly start to learn how to adapt and how to work in these conditions which are windy, hot, sometimes freezing — depends on the time of year that you’re working.
Lucy Fisher 19:44
The weather has been beautiful, but you know we’re not here in December or July when it’s burning hot.
Willa Seidenberg 19:53
And I should say that you have a white shirt on and white pants. And what do they look like right now?
Lucy Fisher 20:01
They’re pretty brown, they’re pretty filled with dust.
Tia Morita 20:05
I have a Manzanar outfit. I’ve reserved the same jeans and the same shirt and hat that I use only for Manzanar work because those clothes will have dirt stains in them that will never ever go away.
Lucy Fisher 20:20
Last night, I blew my nose, and I said oh, god, it’s probably in my ears too.
Willa Seidenberg 20:26
And the winds picking up right now. So you know, we’re getting a tiny taste of it.
Tia Morita 20:31
We’re doing this work here and we get to go back to a hotel with hot water. I think one of the things that I always remember, people in my family always saying, they constantly talked about the dust and the dirt and the wind. It was in everything. It didn’t matter how much they cleaned, you know the barracks were so poor, that the dirt and the wind just entered in easily through the cracks and got over everything that you know, they’re bedding, their food. There was no escaping the life here. It’s just a way to, you know, remember my family’s history, to respect this place, pay homage to what happened here and to restore and keep going the memory of Manzanar so that this never happens again.
Trudi Sandmeier 21:17
So Dani, what did you get out of this experience? How did it take what you’ve learned in the classroom, and make a difference, or change what you thought about archaeology and cultural resource management?
Daniela Velazco 21:30
It gave me a better sense of how hard archaeology can be. How painful and difficult on the body it is. I woke up the next day and I was so sore. And then I knew that I had to go do it all over again. So it gave me a lot of respect for for archaeologists and people who work in cultural resource management, because it’s not an easy job. And I think being on site gave me a better idea of the experience of where a man’s on our was, I can’t say that I know what being at Manzanar was like, but I have a better idea of the landscape in which it was something that I thought was really inspiring that I didn’t see when I drove by last time was the remnants of multiple Japanese gardens and farms. And earlier when I arrived there, all I can think of was like how uninhabitable the space felt. And yet, the people who were interned, were able to create something that was so important to their culture, it’s powerful to see how resilient they could be in this force environment.
Trudi Sandmeier 22:43
It’s a place that’s so sparks the imagination about what it took to sort of carve out a space that you could live and exist, even when it wasn’t a place you wanted to be. But to make it someplace that was okay, a little bit better than it was when you got there. And the fact that there’s so much of that fabric of those gardens in the park and the orchards and there’s so much of that stuff. Still there is really amazing.
All right, Mary, so we’re going to turn back to you, as the professor of this course, what did you hope the students would get out of this experience.
Mary Ringhoff 23:23
I just really wanted people to be able to spend a lot of time at a site that was important, historically, and really get a physical sense of it, which we definitely did with the wind and everything else. And just being able to spend enough time to get your archeological eyes. So when you’re screening sediment through the screen, you know, a nail fragment looks an awful lot like a stick until you find the first one. And then they start popping out. And then you’re seeing nail fragments and nail fragments. And that’s true of really any kind of artifact. And that’s definitely true when you’re an archaeologist doing pedestrian survey. When you see a flake and you know, lithic flake that’s leftover from someone making stone tools, once you see it, and you know what it looks like and you know what you’re looking for, you can’t stop looking for them. I still scan the ground, whenever I’m hiking, I cannot look up at the landscape. You just see them because your eye is looking for them.
Trudi Sandmeier 24:18
You can’t ever unsee them, right?
Mary Ringhoff 24:20
That’s the main thing that I wanted students to get out of that. In the future when they do go on to have careers working for cities or federal agencies or architectural firms or whatever it is, that they could recognize artifacts, if they were on a site and they didn’t know whether or not they should proceed with ground disturbance. So just that very simple aspect I wanted them to be able to recognize. What does an artifact look like? What does a site look like? Realize that features that may be very significant, like the stepping stones we uncovered in the rock steps, they might not look like anything from the ground level, but once you know what they are, and you compare them to the historic photos, you really get that sense.
And so I just wanted people to absorb that. And I think they did. I mean, I think everyone, you know, to some extent, really recognizes what these kinds of things look like now. I definitely harp on it enough in class that I think everyone knows not to assume that there are no archaeological resources left on a particular site. But hopefully the field trip drove at home and the other field trips that we did over the course of the semester too.
Trudi Sandmeier 25:34
As you’re thinking back on this trip, did it work, what you were hoping for?
Mary Ringhoff 25:40
I think so. I hope so. So I think it really was the physical aspect of being there and getting so dirty and experiencing these crazy wind gusts, especially on the second day we were there. If there was an aha moment, it’s probably the same one I had when I went on my first real excavation in high school, which is that, it sounds dumb, but you don’t realize how dirty you’re gonna get and how much dirt is involved in archaeology, which seems like it’s the most obvious thing and you know that going in, but when you’re actually moving, bucket after bucket of dirt, and it’s getting blown in your face, and all over your clothes, it is a different experience. It’s not like doing gentle excavation with a dental pick and a tiny brush in a, you know, rock shelter with no dirt, you are just moving dirt shovelfuls of dirt. And if anything brings home how hard it would have been to live there in those barracks with no kind of insulation, with the wind whistling through the cracks and the dust coming in no matter what you do.
Trudi Sandmeier 26:42
Not a pretty moment in our nation’s history for sure.
Mary Ringhoff 26:46
No, and what I keep thinking about is how beautiful the site is, with the Eastern Sierras right there. It’s the most picturesque backdrop, it’s so lovely. And I wonder did this make it better? Did it make it easier for people to have some pretty landscapes to look at? Or did it make it feel worse? Because they were there against their will. And I think there’s a reason why Manzanar is the one that the government chose Ansel Adams to take the pictures at. The landscape itself is just really something.
Trudi Sandmeier 27:21
I think there’s a lot more left to uncover on this site. And the hospital site you guys started working on, has much more work left to do. So it’s not over.
Mary Ringhoff 27:32
Oh, yeah. And there’s plenty more to the site besides the hospital site. I mean, there are just so many layers to the stories there. And I also want to plug the Manzanar community archaeology program. They’re doing their next session, May 27th through the 31st. And then there will hopefully be another one around Labor Day. And I think if you just Google Manzanar, you can find the National Park Service site for Manzanar, and there’s contact information. The person you’re looking to bug is Jeff Burton, the Cultural Resource Program manager who’s worked there for decades, I really want to encourage anyone that’s driving to Mammoth or Bishop or wherever you’re going from Los Angeles or to Los Angeles through the Owens Valley. Take the time to stop at Manzanar, even if you only have an hour. There’s a short auto tour with signs and the visitor center is really great. One of the barracks is open for you to go inside and experience what it’s like. I just really recommend that people take the time to check it out.
Trudi Sandmeier 28:34
It’s absolutely worth a stop. And even a purposeful visit to go to Lone Pine or Independence and stay overnight and spend a little time at Manzanar because I think the longer you’re there, the more clearly you start to understand all the different layers of the place and the stories of the people that are intertwined with that place. And sobering. I will say it is a sobering spot.
Mary Ringhoff 29:03
It really brings it home how easily history can repeat itself. And I think a lot of us realize that when the Muslim ban happened, and there was a lot of support for American Muslims from the Japanese community, the descendant community, just as there are from a lot of the Jewish American community in terms of immigrations, you know, we we say this could never happen again. But it keeps happening. And so a place like Manzanar really reminds you, you know, what are the repercussions when you let it happen?
Trudi Sandmeier 29:37
Well, I want to thank you, Mary and Dani, for coming to talk a little bit about this and talk a little bit about what you found and about the journey to Manzanar.
