“Leaving in 1942, no one had any idea what to expect, since no one knew what awaited us; we had been underprepared and that just deepened the shock of what we found. Now the situation was reversed. In our isolated world we had overprepared for shows of abuse. If anything, what greeted us now was indifference. Indeed, if the movements of this city were an indication, the very existence of Manzanar and all it had stood for might be in doubt. The land we drove away from three and a half years earlier had not altered a bit. Here we were, like fleeing refugees, trekking in from some ruined zone of war. And yet, on our six-hour drive south, we seemed to have passed through a time machine, as if, in March of 1942 one had lifted his foot to take a step, had set it down in October of 1945, and was expected just to keep on walking, with all intervening time erased.”
From Farwell to Manzanar by by Jeanne Wakatsuki Housto and James D. Houston
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