Ralph Lazo: The Mexican American Teenager Who Chose Manzanar

Manzanar National Historic Site publishes short "ID booklets" on Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Ralph Lazo's was written from his interviews and speeches; it is retold here in hubnx's own words.

Family No. 21019 · Manzanar, California · Address 19-9-5

A hustler from Los Angeles

Ralph Lazo liked to say the first Lazos arrived with Cortés in 1519, and that the adventurous streak ran in the family. Born in a Black hospital in Los Angeles, he went to school early on an American Indian reservation in Arizona while his father worked for the Santa Fe Railroad. His mother, born in Chihuahua, Mexico, died when he was five, and his father, a house painter and muralist, was often away, leaving Ralph and his older sister to fend for themselves. A scrawny kid in remedial PE, he delivered Liberty magazine, swept school floors and collected bottles for the deposit — a real hustler, in his words.

"It was wrong"

Ralph grew up in a mixed neighbourhood and often ate in Japanese American friends' homes. Helping a neighbour at an evacuation sale, he heard a buyer boast, in two slurs, of having cheated the Japanese American seller. He was stunned. It was immoral and wrong, he said: these people had done nothing he hadn't done, except go to Japanese language school — they were Americans just like him. When a friend at school asked what he would do without them and suggested he come along, he decided to.

He told his father, vaguely, that he was going to camp; his father assumed a weekend trip and learned later where his son had gone. Ralph thought his father, a wise man, was probably glad: his son was safe, with friends, fed and in school — behind barbed wire and searchlights, you couldn't ask for more protection. At 16 he went to the old Santa Fe station and signed on. He never had to claim Japanese ancestry; no one asked, and being brown had its advantages.

Manzanar

Most of his friends went to Heart Mountain, but Ralph made new friends at Manzanar, happy among people he admired. At first many took him for Eurasian; when they learned otherwise, they accepted him. He lived first in a block of older bachelors — he spoke no Japanese, they no English — who became his Issei parents and looked after him; later a friend's mother took him in. The camp director, Ralph Merritt, let him stay: among 10,000 people in a square mile, one more or less made no difference.

He delivered mail for $12 a month, then earned $16 as a recreation director, and was class president, full of fun. Classmates recalled him herding them into a laundry room to rehearse Christmas carols and then leading them caroling in the rain, everyone laughing — and credited him with getting students who had never joined school activities to take part. He played football and helped run Friday dances. He left camp only twice: for a YMCA conference in Colorado, and when he was drafted in August 1944.

After

Ralph served in the South Pacific and won a Bronze Star for heroism in combat. He earned a college degree and a master's, and was among the first to give $1,000 toward the class-action lawsuit seeking redress for those held in the camps; some called him a slur for it, and he answered that he knew right from wrong — and was one-eighth Irish, which sometimes showed. He became a counsellor at Los Angeles Valley College and died in 1992.

At his memorial, William Hohri, a friend from camp, said in essence that when the nation turned its back on Japanese Americans and shut them away, the separation was nearly total — but Ralph's presence said that not everyone had turned away, and he should be remembered with love and gratitude for his courage and kindness. In 2004 the film Stand Up for Justice told his story.

Sources

• National Park Service, Manzanar National Historic Site, "Ralph Lazo," an ID booklet written from his interviews and speeches. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/ralph-lazo.htm
• Classmates quoted in the booklet: Rosie M. Kakuuchi and Bruce T. Kaji. Related: William Hohri.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.