The Road to Manzanar: The Story of an American Internment Camp

directed: Aaron Dykes, Melissa Dykes USA 2022, 1h 12m

Mel here. I put together this documentary on the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California - one of ten internment camps the Army used to house Japanese-Americans without charge or trial after the bombing of Pearl Harbor during WWII. We happened to pass by it off the side of the road during a filming road trip back in 2020 prior to the lockdowns and when I saw the guard tower at the entrance to a national park, I had no idea what it was.

Despite having earned a master's degree, I had never been taught about the history of Japanese-American internment in school, and that includes two university level American history classes, one of which specifically covered WWII supposedly in-depth. I wouldn't learn about it until years later during my own history research. Why wasn't this history ever taught?

This dark moment in history is one of the saddest pieces I have ever made, but I think people need to see it and learn about this, so history doesn't get to repeat these human rights violations on the next "minority" because of the majority's hysteria and fear.