Life After Manzanar

FEATURING NAOMI HIRAHARA – Every spring in California, groups of people travel to the site of a notorious American concentration camp – Manzanar – where Japanese Americans and their families were imprisoned during World War II after being labeled “enemy aliens” by the US government.

Life inside Manzanar and how families attempted to recreate normalcy in the most difficult of times has been well-documented, by the likes of famous photographers like Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams.

But what about Life After Manzanar? How did families who had everything stripped from them, reintegrate into society? During our current political moment when white supremacist government policies invoke the history of Japanese internment, we turn to the author of a new book.

Naomi Hirahara, writer, co-author of Terminal Island: The Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor, and former editor of the Rafu Shimpo newspaper. Her award winning mysteries Mas Arai have been published in France, Japan, and Korea. She is the co-author with Heather C. Lindquist of the new book Life After Manzanar.