Gardens Below the Watchtower:
Gardens and Meaning in World War II Japanese-American Internment Camps

By Anna H. Tamura

Chairperson of the Supervisory Committee
Adjunct Professor Gail Dubrow
Department of Landscape Architecture

2002

PROBLEM:
Manzanar National Historic Site, California and Minidoka Internment National Monument, Idaho are two of the newest units of the National Park Service. Their mission is to preserve the site and tell the story of the mass incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Together, they encompass nearly 1000 acres and are specifically designated historic cultural landscapes. The National Park Service intends to reconstruct some of these gardens to accurately interpret the camp landscapes and internment period, yet there is no research on the history and meaning of the landscapes or gardens to inform their decisions. This study focuses on understanding the relationship between the psychology of internment, cultural character, and garden-building activities during three years of internment. The challenges to researching these gardens are manifold: 1) the gardens were created 60 years ago, and their remains are in differing archeological states, 2) there are only a limited number of photographs, as cameras were not allowed in the camps, 3) only a few garden-builders are still alive, 4) historic materials and the internees themselves are spread across Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and California, and 5) internment continues to be a sensitive issue, and former internees are reticent to speak about their experiences.

PROCESS:
The historic research required for this project included traveling to libraries, museum collections, and archives in four states. Extensive on site research and analysis was performed on numerous occasions at both Manzanar and Minidoka. Former internees were located and interviewed to provide personal stories about the gardens and historic landscapes. Finally, literature reviews in garden theory, social theory, internment history, and specific histories associated with each camp provided a basis for understanding and analysis.

FINDINGS:
The camp gardens were the products of varied motivations, emotional responses to internment, and professional and personal backgrounds. The camp gardens embody Japanese cultural characteristics linked to hard work, will to persevere, and the intent to beautify and ameliorate every dwelling place. By buffering the military-issued camp landscape and barrack architecture through landscaping, they effectively buffered the internment experience. The camp gardens were measures of place-making, of communal healing, and political expressions.

Japanese and their American born descendents, collectively known as Nikkei, experienced unimaginable grief, economic ruin, and unfounded racial discrimination, yet as a group they continually displayed an unwillingness to simply accept their circumstances. The camp gardens illustrate this struggle about a cultural community in motion. While most observers see internment as a period of stagnation, depression, and frustration, the camp gardens express raw creativity and ingenuity in action. The garden and park designs speak more to cultural fusion, personal and fashionable preference than to replications of traditional Japanese garden design. Together the spontaneous creation of ornamental and victory gardens demonstrates an abiding self-respect, a mode of self-preservation and growth that defied victimization.

The documentation of their existence, history of their development, and human story embedded in their physical fabric has been long overdue. This thesis fills the void in the scholarship of understanding the camp gardens, the camp landscapes, and their meaning within a tragic episode in American history.