The wooden sign was attached at its four corners to two stakes, like some medieval torture victim. It was pathetically small, given the vastness of the landscape it was in. All around was barren scrubland, and in front of me was a range of forbidding purple mountains. The road I was on had long since become dusty and potholed, as if indicating that there was no point in going any farther. The sign for Manzanar might easily have been missed, if it weren’t in the middle of such nothingness. A dirt track rutted out by the wide wheels of army tanks veered off to the right. I got out of the car, put on my sunhat and started walking toward this place, as it gradually emerged from the haze like a mirage. As I got closer I saw long wooden huts, lined up in neat rows that seemed to go on forever. It was inconceivable somehow that such a place could exist in a civilized world; strange to think that beyond the fence were thousands of people living, sleeping and eating in wooden huts—in the middle of a desert.
