In this photo, you are looking at the guard tower at Manzanar, the Japanese Relocation Camp in California.
When President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered Japanese Americans to be incarcerated in camps in their own country, they lost everything: Their homes, their possessions, their identity as Americans. They became exiles in their own country. Kathy had a professor whose family had been incarcerated at Manazar in California. His tales of what it was like as a boy growing up in that camp were heartbreaking. It’s difficult for us to understand how anyone can sell artifacts stolen from any archaeological or historical site…but selling artifacts from sites like this is especially troubling.
If you had the chance to buy Hitler’s hat, would you? Would you buy an artifact stolen from Auschwitz? Why or why not?