ABSTRACT
The bombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 was followed by the decision to remove all persons of Japanese birth or ancestry from the West Coast. During the spring of 1942 their evacuation to hinterland relocation centers was begun. At one of the camps, Manzanar, on the eastern slope of the California Sierras, a set of riotous demonstrations took place on the first anniversary of Pearl Harbor. The precipitating cause appears to have been the jailing of several evacuees. In the months after the relocation, the internees at first were busy getting physically located and settled. Then they began to form a solidary group, increasingly conscious of their identity vis-à-vis the nearby white guards and the distant white community. A most striking feature of the rioters appears to be their marginality. They stood betwixt the Japan of the past and the America of the present.
