Tracy Slater’s ‘Together in Manzanar’ Shows That History Does Repeat Itself, Time and Again

Political life in these United States since January 20th has proved conclusively that nothing really happens by random chaos. There is an agenda with every action of the current federal administration and passive-aggressive shows of force rear their ugly heads at least once a day. On Aug. 14 California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech near the Japanese American National Museum that elaborated on his plans (since codified) for redistricting. Newsom’s act was a direct response to Texas Republicans and their plan to gerrymander their state’s district to provide an advantage for their party in the 2026 midterm elections. The symbolism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents converging outside the museum was not lost on Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass:

“Clearly, (they were) there to show an unbelievable sign of disrespect and to do that in front of the iconic Japanese American Museum, where the main exhibit is a commemoration of the internment of the Japanese in Los Angeles, it was just the height of disrespect, incredible provocation…”

Writer Tracy Slater’s Together in Manzanar: The True Story of a Japanese Jewish Family in an American Concentration Camp also comes into a world where the U.S. government could endorse an “Alligator Alcatraz.” Formally known as the South Florida Detention Facility, “Alligator Alcatraz” is being sold as an almost humorous holding location for immigrants, mainly Central Americans, who have outstayed their visas or otherwise simply fallen into a hell from which they’ll never get out. (A Federal judge ordered the facility shut down and the Florida Attorney General vowed to keep it in operation. As of Sept. 4., a Federal Appeals Court declared the facility could remain open. Limbo seems to be the only constant status for any of us these days.)

What are we to make of the chilling timeline in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and before the U.S. fully intervened in World War II? As Slater — a Bostonian living in Canada with ties to Japan ­— clearly illustrates, in the spring of 1942, the political was more than welcome for Japanese concentration camps:

“At West Point, the curriculum included readings on the biological basis for intellectual and moral differences among races, with northern Europeans on top.”

Major General Allen W. Gullion believed that Japanese citizenship was not an impediment to eliminating their freedom. Congress’s shameful Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, nearly 20 years before the events of this book, was named after a follower of eugenics, who “warned of ‘an impeding stream of alien blood.’” Pres. Calvin Coolidge, who had written in a 1921 Good Housekeeping article that “biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend,” certainly wasn’t hiding his agenda. The stage was more than set for detention camps that held people for the crime of not being of European heritage. The December 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry into Word War II was prelude to the inevitable.

Together in Manzanar carefully and skillfully tells the story of Elaine Buchman Yoneda, daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, and her Japanese husband Karl. Married 17 years prior to their Manzanar incarceration, Elaine was a Communist social/civil rights activist who had helped fight for justice for the Scottsboro Nine and Tom Mooney. Early volunteers who opted to move to Manzanar in March 1942 were convinced they could make it an ideal community. Maryknoll Brothers helped build Manzanar, and the parallel thinking of righteous right wing religious fervor and unapologetic racism condoned and nurtured by the Federal government in 1942 and now, over eighty years later, is frightening.

There’s a calm and precise tone to this narrative that belies the fear boiling at the surface. Slater quotes historical reflections from four decades later, in the 1980s, that each traveler headed to the unknown that was these camps (mandated by Pres. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066) carried “a personal burden of rage or resignation or despair to the assembly centers and camps which the government had built to protect 130 million Americans against 60,000 of their fellow citizens and resident alien parents.”

Slater makes clear that the media of the day was improbably portraying the poor conditions and cruel realities of these camps as “symbols of decency and democracy.” Incarcees were referred to as “newcomers,” ready to discover a great new adventure in what was being sold as a way of life rather than unjust imprisonment. Camp population was split among Issei (first -generation Japanese immigrants), Nissei (second generation), and Kibei-Nissei (U.S. citizens who have spent their formative years in Japan.) Elaine and Karl faced added resistance as a biracial couple. Why had she joined them? What were people to make of their child? What would become of incarcerees who were not fully Japanese?

Together in Manzanar is separated into three distinct sections: “The Choice,” “The Rupture,” and “The Reckoning.” In the middle section, we are reminded that 2025 is but another in a long series of years where the press has seemed more than willing to acquiesce toward overtures to fascism:

“The tendency not just to downplay the poor conditions and deep injustice of the camps -- but also to uphold them as symbols of decency and democracy -- ...was widely embraced by the American press, particularly leftist papers…”

The 1948 Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act allowed people like Karl to collect a modest sum for property lost during their incarceration, but like with many other such overtures toward reconciliation it proved too little too late. Slater notes that it wasn’t until 1972 that distinct moves started to be made regarding memorializing America’s concentration camps, providing adequate redress for former incarcerees, and ensuring that such a dark period in American history will not happen again. The fact that the current US administration seems to be doing it.s. best to literally and figuratively whitewash such facts from our official records is not so much shameful as it is predictable. Elaine noted in 1974 that “...we should have been a little more vocal in our protest…We should have (had) an understanding…of why we were doing it.”

Come back to the here and now and the same mission statement needs to be at the forefront of why such testimony is written, why it should be read, and how it needs to be understood. Together in Manzanar is not an exhaustive examination of this period in our history. The definitive account is Richard Reeves’ 2016 book Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II. What both texts prove is that we remain woefully underinformed about this part of our history. It’s either that, or our memories have been wiped clean. It’s one thing to absorb historical truths; it’s an entirely different thing to understand their implications and meanings.