From 1942 to 1945, eight U.S. Army guard towers loomed over the more than 11,000 Japanese Americans held in Manzanar, where U.S. Military Police manned the towers for most of that time as a visual reminder that the unconstitutionally incarcerated people were not allowed to leave without permission. Barbed wire and shouted warnings from armed guards taught people to keep their distance, and even children noticed that the weapons were aimed inward toward them. A 1942 newsreel claimed that the Japanese Americans were not prisoners but merely dislocated people, yet the towers, fence, searchlights, and orders to apprehend and arrest anyone leaving without authority enforced confinement. No one tried to escape, though some people sometimes sneaked out temporarily rather than request permission, and tower duty was remembered by some MPs as boring. Although no MP shot anyone from a tower, one private on foot shot a young man after giving him permission to cross a temporary, unfenced boundary line, and during the Manzanar riot two soldiers shot into an unarmed crowd, killing two young men and injuring others. In 1944, the army removed the MPs from tower duty and Japanese American interior police replaced the guards at the entrance gates around the fence except for the main sentry post. After Manzanar War Relocation Center closed on November 21, 1945, the guard towers were removed, but they remained a powerful icon of imprisonment, loss of civil liberties, and loss of identity.