Apartment 2."

It is a federal offence for civilians to dig on Manzanar, which is now a federally protected historical site [Jessica Chou/Al Jazeera]

Pieces of history

Nakamaru never heard stories like Matsuoka's from her own grandfather, who was also interned at Manzanar.

"He never spoke about it to anyone. Like at all. Never talked about it," she says.

The real truth of the camps is gone. Our memory changes history

Kyoko Nakamuru, social justice activist

Wataru Nakamaru, now deceased, was a young man when he and several other Japanese Americans, knowing they would soon be imprisoned at Manzanar, volunteered to travel there to help build the concentration camp that would house about 10,000 people on a single square mile. The site itself is vast, but the federal government had only leased a small parcelfrom the Los Angeles City government to imprison Japanese Americans.

Over lunch, Matsuoka tells Nakamaru that they often ate corned beef, wieners and sauerkraut at the camp mess halls. Few things were certain there - families had to smuggle in radios, which were forbidden, and they would have no way of knowing if the US was winning or losing the war. But corned beef was like death and taxes - a rare, if not onerous, certainty, Matsuoka says.

Even this small detail of history impresses Nakamaru, whose father is Japanese American and mother Swedish American.

"My Swedish family made corned beef and my Japanese grandfather wouldn't eat it. It seemed to make him angry, and you just revealed to me why," Nakamaru proclaims.

Although she has researched the topic, many of her