The first thing all dictators and their cliques do when they get power is start erasing history. No, this never happened. No, that's not a thing. What you know didn't actually take place. They can't start re-wrting the future until they erase the past. Otherwise, it's too difficult for them to rule.
Make it difficult for them. Make it impossible for them. Be a burr in their ass. Be a pain in the neck. They're liars and gaslighters, thieves and dishonorable people. Never let them forget that, or you'll lose your republic for good.
It is scary. And the worst is that it seems unbelievable. I was just thinking this morning about who is preserving files in government that will tell the truth as uncomfortable as it may be in the history books. But my mind did not go as far as thinking of national parks or historic sites. I’ll make sure when I’m cleaning out to save all those pamphlets
The images on the Park's website that Brian O'Neill refers us to, show a group of Japanese sitting at a table eating. The image is presented in such a way as to convey that these people were comfortable and happy. It does not tell the truth of the situation, that they were incarcerated and persecuted. It is true that history can be revised and edited, also that collective memories can be purged and that what actually occurred can be forgotten. It has happened throughout the human existence. Always, those in power control the country's narrative, and authoritarian regimes do this to an extreme. The picture on the website brings to mind images and videos from Theresienstadt in Terezín, where the Nazis forced prisoners, mainly Jews, to demonstrate through music performances, artwork, and other activities that they were happy, content, and well off. They were filmed and photographed for publicity purposes. Along with erasing history, which is already distressing, to take images of people and show them in a way that distorts their true meaning is despicable.
This just makes me sick. I will certainly keep all the pamphlets from the Civil War sites we visited. But there are hundreds of historians like my husband who could re-write it if need be. 👹
Thanks for this, Mr. O'Neill. I live about a half hour north of Manzanar. When I moved here in the way before times, it was being used as a county road department maintenance yard. The gymnasium was used as their shop and had a dirt floor. I was skeptical when they said it was being turned over to the Park Service. I didn't think it could be salvaged, or even if it should. I was wrong. I go frequently, and learn something new every time. I never leave unshaken. When I was younger, I knew two brothers who were interned there. Their first-person tales were gripping, but seeing the place close up rather than just passing by on the highway made it very real. I need to return soon to see the changes first hand.
I also grew up north of Manzanar in the Owens Valley, and remember when the only thing you could see were the pagoda-roofed guard towers and the county equipment garage (formerly the Manzanar community hall, now the main museum). I remember going down to Independence with my new drivers' license at 16, and digging the Manzanar High School yearbooks out of the county library's rare book room to see what it had looked like before.
What it's become since is one of the most stunning historical monuments in the US. I mean -- they've even restored the orchards, and the local stores sells the produce from the trees planted by interned Japanese nurserymen in the early 40s, which still grow on the site. It's just *alive* in a way that those of us who remember it when could have hardly imagined.
I also remember that the local elders were always uneasy with Manzanar's resurrection. They'd spent the war looking the other way, did not want us asking too many questions about it, and sometimes tried to teach us outright lies about what happened. We deserved better -- but their heirs are the ones trying to sabotage this history now.
I'm guessing you're in Big Pine. My brother is one of your neighbors.
Yes, I'm in Big Pine. I moved here in 1995 after living in Mammoth for 25 years.
There are a few "Manzanar houses" on my block here, converted from the dorms down there. I wish I knew the origin story of my own house. It was moved here as a flat-roofed tarpaper shack in 1940, according to county records. It's possible it came from Manzanar, or maybe Zurich. I'll never know!
Those shacks ended up all over the valley after the war. In Bishop, two of them were hauled up to a vacant lot on West Line St. across from the Bishop Professional Building, and served as the Girl Scout and Boy Scout halls into the 1980s. I spent a lot of time in them as a kid. The Forest Service also re-deployed a lot of them to various places where they needed office or visitor space in remote areas. I seem to recall that Union Carbide had a couple of them up at Rovana and the mill back in the day.
I think the Scouts, 4H and FFA still use those buildings. There’s some out in the Dixon Lane area used as apartments, too. They were such nondescript structures, they could blend in anywhere.
Thank you Brian!!! 1984 comes to life! In the era of the Trump regime, we not only have to try to conserve our natural environment but also our historical facts - I will save all my pamphlets for the Great Era of Restoration ahead!!
With respect to “Last month, new signs went up across the parks, inviting visitors to report any displays they consider “negative about either past or living Americans.” The QR code leads to a submission form under the March directive. In other words, visitors have been deputized to help.”. I would urge EVERYONE who sees one of these signs to respond to the QR code and point out that the sign itself is a disparagement and desecration because its language clearly intimates that there is something dark and sinister about the past that must be hidden, and because the language tone of the sign clearly evokes images of Communist North Korea, East Germany or Stalinist Russia and therefore is in-American.
Good to have another post, Doctor O’Neill, but this one made me cry. Yes, everyone save everything from the Before Times so they can be reconstructed. If we don’t allow it,First Felon will become a pariah (officially, in history books) so we don’t have to continue his treasonous behavior.
The mere fact that a Trump executive order used the words “improper ideology” proves that Trump is a wannabe tyrant and the entire Republican party is a maga cult that hates the United States. That’s full-on Mao or Stalin or Kim Jong Un dear leader stuff.
Thank you so much for this article. Between what “they” are trying to take out of school curriculums and reading now about changes at our parks, I realize more and more how organized and sick 2025 and its writers and believers are! It will take years to undue these things once we get them out of power and that itself may take years😢
Thank you for your attention to this. I was critical of your piece of writing about Hegseth’s leadership of the pentagon for not calling out his erasure of human experience and identity that conflicts with his White Supremacist ideology. I appreciate and am saddened by your first-hand account here. I keep coming back to the thought that they can’t wipe away the truth of my experience in this country (I’m white and happily on a DEI pathway, starting with my birth on the Navajo Reservation) nor can they wipe away my abhorrence of their absurd claims of superiority and dominance because they are white and male. Rather than referring to White Supremacy as an ideology, perhaps we should call it a myth. As a white person, I denounce it and I dare them to try to erase my white self that values so much of what they seek to destroy.
The first thing all dictators and their cliques do when they get power is start erasing history. No, this never happened. No, that's not a thing. What you know didn't actually take place. They can't start re-wrting the future until they erase the past. Otherwise, it's too difficult for them to rule.
Make it difficult for them. Make it impossible for them. Be a burr in their ass. Be a pain in the neck. They're liars and gaslighters, thieves and dishonorable people. Never let them forget that, or you'll lose your republic for good.
It is scary. And the worst is that it seems unbelievable. I was just thinking this morning about who is preserving files in government that will tell the truth as uncomfortable as it may be in the history books. But my mind did not go as far as thinking of national parks or historic sites. I’ll make sure when I’m cleaning out to save all those pamphlets
An important book on this subject is Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley.
The images on the Park's website that Brian O'Neill refers us to, show a group of Japanese sitting at a table eating. The image is presented in such a way as to convey that these people were comfortable and happy. It does not tell the truth of the situation, that they were incarcerated and persecuted. It is true that history can be revised and edited, also that collective memories can be purged and that what actually occurred can be forgotten. It has happened throughout the human existence. Always, those in power control the country's narrative, and authoritarian regimes do this to an extreme. The picture on the website brings to mind images and videos from Theresienstadt in Terezín, where the Nazis forced prisoners, mainly Jews, to demonstrate through music performances, artwork, and other activities that they were happy, content, and well off. They were filmed and photographed for publicity purposes. Along with erasing history, which is already distressing, to take images of people and show them in a way that distorts their true meaning is despicable.
This just makes me sick. I will certainly keep all the pamphlets from the Civil War sites we visited. But there are hundreds of historians like my husband who could re-write it if need be. 👹
Thanks for this, Mr. O'Neill. I live about a half hour north of Manzanar. When I moved here in the way before times, it was being used as a county road department maintenance yard. The gymnasium was used as their shop and had a dirt floor. I was skeptical when they said it was being turned over to the Park Service. I didn't think it could be salvaged, or even if it should. I was wrong. I go frequently, and learn something new every time. I never leave unshaken. When I was younger, I knew two brothers who were interned there. Their first-person tales were gripping, but seeing the place close up rather than just passing by on the highway made it very real. I need to return soon to see the changes first hand.
I also grew up north of Manzanar in the Owens Valley, and remember when the only thing you could see were the pagoda-roofed guard towers and the county equipment garage (formerly the Manzanar community hall, now the main museum). I remember going down to Independence with my new drivers' license at 16, and digging the Manzanar High School yearbooks out of the county library's rare book room to see what it had looked like before.
What it's become since is one of the most stunning historical monuments in the US. I mean -- they've even restored the orchards, and the local stores sells the produce from the trees planted by interned Japanese nurserymen in the early 40s, which still grow on the site. It's just *alive* in a way that those of us who remember it when could have hardly imagined.
I also remember that the local elders were always uneasy with Manzanar's resurrection. They'd spent the war looking the other way, did not want us asking too many questions about it, and sometimes tried to teach us outright lies about what happened. We deserved better -- but their heirs are the ones trying to sabotage this history now.
I'm guessing you're in Big Pine. My brother is one of your neighbors.
Yes, I'm in Big Pine. I moved here in 1995 after living in Mammoth for 25 years.
There are a few "Manzanar houses" on my block here, converted from the dorms down there. I wish I knew the origin story of my own house. It was moved here as a flat-roofed tarpaper shack in 1940, according to county records. It's possible it came from Manzanar, or maybe Zurich. I'll never know!
Those shacks ended up all over the valley after the war. In Bishop, two of them were hauled up to a vacant lot on West Line St. across from the Bishop Professional Building, and served as the Girl Scout and Boy Scout halls into the 1980s. I spent a lot of time in them as a kid. The Forest Service also re-deployed a lot of them to various places where they needed office or visitor space in remote areas. I seem to recall that Union Carbide had a couple of them up at Rovana and the mill back in the day.
I think the Scouts, 4H and FFA still use those buildings. There’s some out in the Dixon Lane area used as apartments, too. They were such nondescript structures, they could blend in anywhere.
Thank you Brian!!! 1984 comes to life! In the era of the Trump regime, we not only have to try to conserve our natural environment but also our historical facts - I will save all my pamphlets for the Great Era of Restoration ahead!!
With respect to “Last month, new signs went up across the parks, inviting visitors to report any displays they consider “negative about either past or living Americans.” The QR code leads to a submission form under the March directive. In other words, visitors have been deputized to help.”. I would urge EVERYONE who sees one of these signs to respond to the QR code and point out that the sign itself is a disparagement and desecration because its language clearly intimates that there is something dark and sinister about the past that must be hidden, and because the language tone of the sign clearly evokes images of Communist North Korea, East Germany or Stalinist Russia and therefore is in-American.
An important article. Thank you for exposing the changes that are taking place. This re-writing is taking place in many other areas as well.
Good to have another post, Doctor O’Neill, but this one made me cry. Yes, everyone save everything from the Before Times so they can be reconstructed. If we don’t allow it,First Felon will become a pariah (officially, in history books) so we don’t have to continue his treasonous behavior.
The mere fact that a Trump executive order used the words “improper ideology” proves that Trump is a wannabe tyrant and the entire Republican party is a maga cult that hates the United States. That’s full-on Mao or Stalin or Kim Jong Un dear leader stuff.
Thank you so much for this article. Between what “they” are trying to take out of school curriculums and reading now about changes at our parks, I realize more and more how organized and sick 2025 and its writers and believers are! It will take years to undue these things once we get them out of power and that itself may take years😢
Thank you for your attention to this. I was critical of your piece of writing about Hegseth’s leadership of the pentagon for not calling out his erasure of human experience and identity that conflicts with his White Supremacist ideology. I appreciate and am saddened by your first-hand account here. I keep coming back to the thought that they can’t wipe away the truth of my experience in this country (I’m white and happily on a DEI pathway, starting with my birth on the Navajo Reservation) nor can they wipe away my abhorrence of their absurd claims of superiority and dominance because they are white and male. Rather than referring to White Supremacy as an ideology, perhaps we should call it a myth. As a white person, I denounce it and I dare them to try to erase my white self that values so much of what they seek to destroy.
It’s a good article.