Ralph Lazo: The Teenager Who Walked Into Manzanar

In March of nineteen forty-two, when the United States Army began removing Japanese American families from Los Angeles, Ralph Lazo made a decision that nobody required of him.

He was seventeen years old. His mother was Mexican American. His father was Irish American. He was not Japanese American. He was not on any removal order. Nobody was coming for him.

He went anyway.

Lazo's friends from the neighborhood, the Japanese American kids he had grown up with, were being told to report for removal. He refused to be separated from them. He packed a bag and accompanied them to Manzanar. He lived in the camp for more than a year before being drafted into the United States Army and sent overseas.

The Japanese American National Museum holds the documentation of his time at Manzanar. His is one of the very few stories at this site involving someone who was not required to be here choosing, deliberately, to share the conditions of those who were. He had no legal standing to resist internment on their behalf. He could do one thing: refuse to stand apart.

Lazo later spoke about what he had seen and understood at Manzanar. The account on record at the Japanese American National Museum indicates that his experience at the camp changed his understanding of what American democracy meant in practice, versus what he had been taught it was. He was not wrong to make that distinction.

He walked in. Most people did not.