AUTHOR CATHY IRWIN TO DISCUSS PLIGHT OF MANZANAR ORPHANS ON MARCH 21

Author Cathy Irwin will relate stories from her new book, Twice Orphaned: Voices from the Children’s Village of Manzanar, and will discuss the history with some of the orphans forced to live in a government-run World War II concentration camp in a public program set for Saturday, March 21, beginning at 2 p.m., at the Japanese American National Museum.

Thousands of Japanese Americans were unlawfully forced to leave their homes by the U.S. government during World War II and over 120,000 were unconstitutionally imprisoned in camps such as Manzanar. A lesser-known story was the existence of an orphanage in Manzanar called the Children’s Village. Over 100 orphans, some who were part Japanese and were unaware of their own heritage, were transferred from orphanages on the West Coast.

Institutions such as the Shonien or Japanese Children’s Home of Los Angeles, the Salvation Army’s Japanese Children’s Home in San Francisco and Maryknoll protested the removal of their orphans of Japanese ancestry, but to no avail.

Irwin, a professor of English at the University of La Verne, became acquainted with the story of the orphans through her contact with former Manzanar inmates such as Wilbur Sato and Sue Kunitomi Embrey. A project at California State University, Fullerton, began to collect oral histories from some of the surviving orphans and inspired Irwin to focus on putting some of the information into a book. What Irwin discovered was that many of the orphans were reluctant to talk about their experiences or even identify their unique situation to others, including with their own families. If life was harsh for most inmates, it was significantly tougher for the orphans. Manzanar Director Ralph Merritt criticized the gathering up of the young people in a report. "The morning was spent at the Children's Village," Merritt wrote, describing Thanksgiving Day, 1942, "with the 90 orphans [to date] who had been evacuated from Alaska to San Diego and sent to Manzanar because they might be a threat to national security. What a travesty [of] justice!"

This program will touch upon the core histories of the Children’s Village and will include the first-person accounts of some of the surviving orphans. The program is free to National Museum members or with admission. Reservations are suggested. For more information or to make a reservation, call the Japanese American National Museum at (213) 625-0414.