(Summer 2008)
Lone Pine, California is on the central portion of U.S. Route 395 and is a northern gateway to Death Valley. It's also the gateway to Mt. Whitney, the host of the "world-famous" Lone Pine Film Festival, and the closest town to the Manzanar National Historic Site.
Lone Pine is actually at the base of Mt Whitney and since we had been to Death Valley's Badwater, the "Official Lowest Point in the Western Hemisphere", we also wanted to check out the highest mountain in the lower 48. But, again we were stymied. It turns out you now need a permit to actually climb the mountain so we just settled for exploring around the Portal area where we saw hikers waiting for their tee times. While we were there, the Fish and Wildlife people arrived with their truck and we watched in fascination as they dumped 15 minutes worth of trout into the small lake.
As we drove back down to the valley, we had some spectacular views of the Alabama Hills (oddly named by Southern sympathizers after the Confederate ship) and the Movie Road. The movie museum in town sponsors the film festival and has some great displays about all of the movies filmed there.
The Alabama Hills have been the setting for hundreds of B-Westerns as well as more famous ones like Nevada Smith and Joe Kidd. This has also been the setting for western scenes from numerous other westerns like How the West Was Won. Even some science fiction films were shot there including Star Trek V and the entire Tremors series.
It's fame, however, is apparently how much it looks like Afghanistan. From 1939 with the entirely on-location filming of the classic Gunga Din to the recent hit movie Iron Man, this apparently is the place Hollywood goes when they want that authentic look.
But the highlight of our visit to Lone Pine was the Manzanar National Historic Site. I thought I knew the story of the internment camps fairly well, so I really wasn't expecting to learn much new, but the Manzanar exhibits presented a far more complete and complex story than I was aware of.
There is increasing interest in this site and major efforts are being made to rebuild a sampling of the structures for a demonstration block. They were working on the mess hall while we were there. We did see them digging at the primary garden site but it wasn't clear if they intended to restore it or not. It would be a true oasis in the desert if they did.
The recently completed rebuilding of one of the guard towers captures the essence of the place. At the time, one of the justifications for the relocations was for the protection of the Japanese-Americans and you can still find people saying that today. So the purpose of the guard tower was to protect those inside, much like a fort on the frontier. But they didn't tell this to the soldiers who manned the towers and they focused their lights and aimed their weapons at the "inmates".
Inside the auditorium, there is a very professional multimedia exhibit that leads you chronologically through the entire, very sad affair and presents the attempted justifications, the actions, and the results and raises questions that still need to be answered today. Our visit was very sobering and quite moving. This was easily the best presentation I have ever seen at any National Park.
But this isn't quite the end of the story. As we were preparing to leave, I stopped to speak to one of the park Rangers and commented how much dignity and restraint these innocent victims displayed and she said that I didn't notice this by chance. Manzanar was originally selected for reconstruction from among the ten camps precisely because it was the one with least amount of problems. There were mostly women and children here, including an orphanage. She said that the Tule Lake center was where "troublemakers" were sent. These were mostly angry young men, the No-No's who refused to answer the loyalty questionnaire "correctly". Today there is a movement to have that site rebuilt and I hope to see that happen. How exactly should a victim of paranoia react? It would be interesting to hear that side of the story.
