The Manzanar Riot: Resistance Inside the Wire

The conventional account of Japanese American incarceration during World War Two emphasizes endurance, dignity, and stoicism. That account is true as far as it goes. It is not complete.

On December fifth, nineteen forty-two, nine months into the operation of Manzanar, an argument about a man the camp administration suspected of collaboration escalated until military police were facing a crowd of several hundred internees in the dark. The military police fired into the crowd with rifles and a machine gun. Two internees were killed. Ten were wounded.

The immediate trigger was the arrest of a man accused of assaulting a Community Council member who was believed to be cooperating with the War Relocation Authority against the interests of the people in the camp. The deeper cause was everything that had accumulated in nine months: the conditions, the rations, the guard towers, the distinction between a government that imprisoned you and a government that wanted your loyalty.

The riot was documented by the War Relocation Authority's own administrative records, and by oral histories held by the Japanese American National Museum. It was one expression of a broader resistance inside Manzanar. There were work slowdowns. There were refusals to sign the loyalty questionnaire the government distributed in nineteen forty-three, asking internees to swear allegiance to the same government that had imprisoned them. The internees who answered no to both loyalty questions, known as the no-no boys, accepted prosecution and transfer to a segregation center rather than sign.

The records at the Japanese American National Museum hold more than two hundred names of Manzanar internees who answered no to both questions. That is not passivity. That is something else.