Manzanar National Historic Site, CA By Aaron Johnson, Joel Anderson, 2024
- Manzanar National Historic Site, CA
When most people think of the National Park Service, they think of the big and beautiful nature spaces the Park Service preserves. And while preserving nature is a core mandate of the NPS, so is preserving history. America’s history is long, deep, powerful, memorable, and important. Even the more difficult, unpleasant sides to that history are worth learning about. Case in point, one of the NPS sites in California is Manzanar National Historic Site, a preservation of one of the Japanese internment camps used in World War II. Located at the foot of the imposing Sierra Nevada in eastern California's Owens Valley, Manzanar has been identified as the best preserved of these camps. The first Japanese Americans arrived at Manzanar in March 1942, just one month after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 (an order to build the camp Japanese families would be staying in). Manzanar was in operation as an internment camp from 1942 until 1945, and the site provides a powerful and important interpretation of U.S. history, what was occurring at the time, why it happened, and what we can learn from it. To commemorate that history in vintage poster art, Anderson Design Group poster artists hand-rendered a classic original illustration in the fashion of 20th Century travel art. This retro design and original National Park art is available as a poster, print, canvas, mini canvas, metal sign, notecard, or postcard. To learn more about Manzanar National Historic Site, visit the website for the National Park Service.