Intermountain Region

National Park Service

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PO Box 25287

Denver, CO 80225

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PERMIT NO. G-83
INSIDE THIS ISSUE

2015: A YEAR IN REVIEW – PRESERVING AND INTERPRETING WORLD WAR II JAPANESE 

AMERICAN CONFINEMENT SITES 

•	 Introduction 

•	 Overview of the Fiscal Year 2015 Grant Program Process

STATUS OF FUNDING FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2015 JAPANESE AMERICAN CONFINEMENT SITES 

GRANT CYCLE

FISCAL YEAR 2015 GRANT AWARDS

 FISCAL YEAR 2015 PROJECT DESCRIPTIONS BY STATE 

•	 Arkansas

•	 California

•	 Colorado

•	 District of Columbia

•	 Hawai’i

•	 New York

•	 Texas

•	 Washington

•	 Wyoming

MAP OF GRANT FUNDING BY STATE, 2009-2015

GRAPH OF GRANT FUNDING BY SITE, 2009-2015

PROJECTS COMPLETED DURING FISCAL YEAR 2015 

•	 Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Creates Website to Share Stories of Japanese American Detainees on 

Angel Island

•	 East Bay Center for the Performing Arts Shares Hidden Legacy of Japanese Traditional Arts in New Documentary

•	 Densho Expands Reach of Teacher Training and Enhances Online Collection with Three NPS Grants

•	 Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc., Uncovers Artifacts at Crystal City Family Internment Camp

•	 Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation Extends Reach of Incarceration Story with New Website

•	 Japanese American Citizens League’s Bridging Communities Program Expands to Chicago

•	 Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i Uses Two NPS Grants to Engage Public with New Curriculum and Virtual Tour 

that Explore Hawai‘i’s Internment History

•	 National Japanese American Historical Society Develops Curriculum and Expands Digital Collection with Two NPS Grants

•	 Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library Adds to World War II Homefront Collection

•	 Ore-Cal Resource Conservation and Development Area Council Creates Traveling Art Exhibit on Tule Lake

•	 Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission Produces Traveling Exhibit on Farm Labor Camps in the Pacific Northwest

•	 Oregon Nikkei Endowment Documents Experiences of Portland’s Japanese Americans during World War II 

•	 Topaz Museum Board Constructs Museum and Education Center to Share History of World War II Incarceration

•	 University of Arkansas at Little Rock Restores Monuments at the Rohwer Cemetery

•	 University of Hawai‘i Center for Oral History Collects Unspoken Memories of Jerome

•	 University of Idaho Completes Archeological Survey and Artifact Analysis at Kooskia Internment Site

•	 Washington State University Preserves the Hirahara Photograph Collection and Enhances Access to Heart Mountain Archives

•	 Wing Luke Museum Preserves Stories, Collections of World War II Veterans and Incarcerees

STATUS OF FUNDING FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2016 JAPANESE AMERICAN CONFINEMENT SITES 

GRANT CYCLE 

CONTACT INFORMATION
1

 Spring 2016

National Park Service

U.S. Department of the Interior

Japanese American

Confinement Sites

Grant Program

2015: A YEAR IN REVIEW – PRESERVING AND INTERPRETING WORLD WAR II 

JAPANESE AMERICAN CONFINEMENT SITES 

The National Park Service (NPS) is pleased to report 

on the progress of the Japanese American Confinement 

Sites (JACS) Grant Program. On December 21, 2006, 

President George W. Bush signed Public Law 109-441 

(120 STAT 3288) – Preservation of Japanese American 

Confinement Sites – which authorized the NPS to create a 

grant program to encourage and support the preservation 

and interpretation of historic confinement sites where 

Japanese Americans were detained. The law authorized 

up to $38 million for the life of the grant program. 

Congress first appropriated funding for the program in 

2009. JACS grants are awarded through a competitive 

process in which $2 of Federal money matches every $1 

in non-Federal funds and “in-kind” contributions.

Over the past seven years, the program has awarded 148 

grant awards totaling more than $18.2 million to private 

nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, state, 

local, and tribal governments, and other public entities. 

The projects involve 20 states and the District of Columbia, 

and include oral histories, preservation of camp artifacts 

and buildings, documentaries and educational curriculum, 

and exhibits and memorials that preserve what remains 

of the confinement sites and honor the people who 

were incarcerated there by sharing their experiences. 

The Fiscal Year 2015 grant awards, featured in this report, 

include a traveling exhibition to tell the lesser known 

story of the former Tuna Canyon Detention Station in 

California; the emergency stabilization of a root cellar 

used by incarcerees to store fruit and vegetables that they 

grew and harvested at Heart Mountain, Wyoming; and 

the creation of an online archive that will include more 

than 1,300 digitally scanned documents and photographs 

related to the Rohwer incarceration site in Arkansas. 

The 20 grants awarded in 2015 range from $16,000 to 

the Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc., 

continued on page 2 

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock worked with stakeholders and community members to restore the memorials at the Rohwer cemetery in Arkansas. 

This project was funded, in part, by a Japanese American Confinement Sites grant, featured on page 30. Photo courtesy: Ken West Photography 
2

National Park Service

to research and document a 70-year-old mural that 

was painted by an internee at the Seagoville Internment 

Camp (INS Detention Station) in Dallas County, Texas, 

to $400,000 for New York’s public media station WNET 

to create “Prisoner in My Homeland,” a series of free 

online educational video games to engage middle 

school-age students with the history of Japanese 

American incarceration during World War II. 

Each year, as new projects begin, past JACS-funded 

projects are completed. Some of those completed 

include an exhibit honoring Japanese Americans 

who served in the military while their families were 

incarcerated, the preservation of a rare family photo 

collection providing insight into life at Heart Mountain, 

and educational projects encouraging youth to make 

connections between the history of World War II 

incarceration sites and civil liberties issues of today.

The NPS is appreciative of the hard work and dedication 

demonstrated by JACS grant recipients to preserve the 

various sites, to educate the public about the injustices 

of World War II incarceration, and to document 

and share the first-hand experiences of those who 

lived it and the lasting impacts on their families. 

“As stewards of our nation’s history, the National 

Park Service recognizes the importance of preserving 

these confinement sites,” NPS Director Jonathan B. 

Jarvis said. “They are poignant reminders – today 

and for future generations – that we must be always 

vigilant in upholding civil liberties for all. These grants 

help us share valuable lessons on the fragility of our 

constitutional rights and ensure the experiences of 

those who were incarcerated are not forgotten.”

2015: A YEAR IN REVIEW

continued from page 1

Watercolor painting of view from Camp Harmony Assembly Center, Puyallup Washington, 1942. Image courtesy: The Wing Luke Museum
3

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

As defined by Public Law 109-441, eligible confinement 

sites include the ten War Relocation Authority camps: Gila 

River (AZ), Amache (Granada) (CO), Heart Mountain 

(WY), Jerome (AR), Manzanar (CA), Minidoka (ID), 

Poston (AZ), Rohwer (AR), Topaz (UT), and Tule Lake 

(CA), as well as other sites – including “assembly,” 

“relocation,” and “isolation” centers– identified in the NPS 

report Confinement and Ethnicity and as determined by the 

Secretary of the Interior, where Japanese Americans were 

imprisoned during World War II. 

Seven major categories of activities are eligible for JACS 

grants: capital projects (such as the construction of new 

interpretive centers); documentation (such as archeological 

surveys); oral history interviews; interpretation and 

education related to historic confinement sites (such as 

wayside exhibits or educational curricula); preservation 

of confinement sites and related historic resources 

(such as restoration of historic buildings or collections 

conservation); planning projects (such as resource 

management plans); and non-Federal real property 

acquisition (allowed only at Heart Mountain (WY), 

Honouliuli (HI), Jerome (AR), Rohwer (AR), and Topaz 

(UT), per stipulations of Public Laws 109-441 and 111-88).

Eligible Sites and Projects 

Overview of the 2015 Grant Program Process

For the 2015 grant program, the NPS mailed postcards 

announcing the availability of grant applications and 

guidelines to approximately 7,500 individuals and 

organizations. On September 12, 2014, the NPS also 

announced the availability of application materials through a 

national press release, the grant program website, and other 

correspondence. 

By the application deadline of November 12, 2014, the NPS 

received 36 applications requesting more than $5.7 million 

in Federal funds. During the week of December 9, 2014, the 

JACS grant review panel convened at the NPS Intermountain 

Regional Office in Lakewood, Colorado, to evaluate the 

proposals. The panel was composed of NPS staff from 

the Intermountain, Midwest, and Pacific West regions. 

Appointed by NPS Regional Directors, the six panel members 

represented a variety of backgrounds and disciplines, 

including expertise in archeology, interpretive media, 

cultural anthropology, architectural history, curation, and 

historical architecture. The panel evaluated and ranked each 

proposal using criteria and guidelines that were established 

based on public input. 

The panel recommended 20 proposals to receive funding. 

Director Jarvis announced the 20 grant awards on June 16, 2015. 

Following Executive Order 9066, Japanese Americans wait for a train that 

will take them from Los Angeles to Owens Valley, later the site of the 

Manzanar Relocation Center. Photo courtesy: Library of Congress (LC-DIGfsa-8a31155), photo by Russell Lee, Farm Security Administration

Families arrive at the Turlock Assembly Center in California, May 2, 1942. 

Most would later be sent to the Gila River incarceration site in Arizona.

Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-151-223), Dorothea Lange Collection
National Park Service

4

Fiscal Year 2015 Project Descriptions by State

ARKANSAS

Recipient: University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR) 

Project Title: Rohwer Reconstructed II: Making 

Connections Through Time and Space

Grant Award: $254,606

Site(s): Jerome Relocation Center, Chicot and 

 Drew counties, AR; Rohwer Relocation 

 Center, Desha County, AR

Description: The University of Arkansas will add an 

estimated 1,300 items to its existing online 

database of Rohwer and Jerome materials, 

including photographs and biographies of 

incarcerees and administrative staff. Also, 

a 3D visualization of Barracks Block 12 at 

Rohwer, created with a 2013 JACS grant, 

will be expanded to include the auditorium, 

library and athletic fields, with audio 

narratives integrated into the model.

Recipient: University of Central Arkansas (Conway, AR)

Project Title: A Season of Remembrance: Rohwer and 

Jerome at 70

Grant Award: $75,908

Site(s): Jerome Relocation Center, Chicot and 

Drew counties, AR; Rohwer Relocation

 Center, Desha County, AR 

Description: The University of Central Arkansas will 

commemorate the 70-year anniversary 

of the closing of the Rohwer and 

Jerome incarceration sites through the 

production of Remembrance, a theatrical 

performance based on stories from 

the Japanese American World War II 

incarceration experience. Remembrance 

will be the centerpiece of “A Season of 

Remembrance: Rohwer and Jerome at 

70,” a series of public events—lectures, 

readings, exhibitions, and workshops. 

The project also will include lectures and 

demonstration performances for high 

schools, and a video documenting the 

work’s creation and performance. 

“Camp at Night” painting by incarceree at Rohwer incarceration site, 

Arkansas, September 18, 1942. Photo courtesy: Butler Center for Arkansas 

Studies, Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel/Rosalie Santine Gould Collection

Kumaso and Sakino Yamamoto with daughters Aiko (back) and Setsuko 

at Jerome incarceration site in Arkansas, 1944. Photo courtesy: Private 

collection of Sharon Wong, Arkansas State University 

FISCAL YEAR 2015 GRANT AWARDS

In 2015 – the JACS Grant Program’s seventh year – 20 awards provided more than $2.8 million to projects in 8 states, 

and the District of Columbia. A list of the winning projects follows.
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

5

CALIFORNIA 

Recipient: California State University, Dominguez 

Hills (Carson, CA)

Project Title: California State University Japanese 

American Digitization Project 

Grant Award: $321,554

Site(s): Multiple Sites

Description: California State University (CSU) will 

digitize nearly 10,000 documents

and more than 100 oral histories related 

to the confinement of Japanese Americans 

during World War II, and make those 

materials available on a CSU-sponsored 

website. In addition, the project will result 

in a teaching guide and traveling exhibit 

for schools and the public. A consortium 

of the following 13 CSU archives will 

participate in the project: Dominguez 

Hills, Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Fresno, 

Fullerton, Northridge, Sacramento, San Jose, 

San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, 

San Francisco, and Sonoma. 

Recipient: Heyday (Berkeley, CA)

Project Title: “Journeys from Manzanar,” a Published 

Book Project 

Grant Award: $100,000

Site(s): Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, 

CA

Description: Heyday, a non-profit publisher, will partner 

with the Manzanar History Association to 

co-publish a book about the post-World War 

II experiences of the children of Manzanar. 

Drawing on 500 oral histories, the book’s 

essays will provide an intimate glimpse into 

their lives and the ways in which they left 

lasting imprints on the American landscape 

far beyond Manzanar. Topics range from 

the challenges and prejudices faced during 

the post-war years to federal redress and 

reparations in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Students leaving school at Poston (Camp II) in Arizona. Photo courtesy: 

California State University, Sacramento Library

Gardens planted outside of barracks at Manzanar incarceration site in 

California. Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-151-426), Dorothea Lange 

Collection
6

Recipient: National Japanese American Historical 

Society (San Francisco, CA) 

Project Title: Camp Digital Archives 

Grant Award: $83,875

Site(s): Multiple Sites

Description: The National Japanese American Historical 

Society will digitize approximately 400 new 

entries from its collections and upload them 

to a database hosted on the University of 

San Francisco’s Gleeson Library Digital 

Collections website. The selections 

will comprise letters, photographs, oral 

history transcripts, and other personal 

documents, as well as official documents and 

manuscripts related to all ten War Relocation 

Authority incarceration sites and some 

Department of Justice internment sites. 

Recipient: The Regents of the University of 

California, c/o UC Berkeley Sponsored 

Projects Office (Berkeley, CA) 

Project Title: Japanese American Internment Sites: A 

Digital Archive 

Grant Award: $296,347

Site(s): Multiple Sites, including Colorado River 

 Relocation Center (Poston), La Paz

 County, AZ; Tule Lake Segregation Center, 

 Modoc County, CA; Gila River Relocation 

 Center, Pinal County, AZ; Manzanar 

 Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA 

Description: The Bancroft Library at the University 

of California, Berkeley, will establish a 

comprehensive virtual archive of its holdings 

of War Relocation Authority (WRA) records – 

the largest repository of WRA records outside 

of the National Archives. While the Bancroft 

Library holdings about the forced removal 

and incarceration of Japanese Americans 

during World War II are among its most 

heavily used materials, the documents are 

widely dispersed. This project will connect 

the WRA holdings to the existing finding aid 

and allow users to access the records via a 

thematic website. 

Tule Lake High School junior class, 1944. Photo courtesy: Private 

collection of Sharon Wong, Arkansas State University 

The digitization of NJAHS’ collections increases access to artifacts 

from incarceration sites such as Gila River. Image courtesy: The 

National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc.

National Park Service
7

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

Recipient: San Fernando Valley Japanese American 

Community Center (Pacoima, CA)

Project Title: Only the Oaks Remain: The Tuna Canyon 

Detention Station Traveling Exhibit 

Grant Award: $102,190

Site(s): Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Los 

 Angeles County, CA

Description: The San Fernando Valley Japanese American 

Community Center will create a museumquality traveling exhibit to tell the story of 

the former Tuna Canyon Detention Station 

in Tujunga, California. The exhibit will 

include the names of the more than 2,000 

people of Japanese, Italian, German, and 

Japanese-Peruvian descent detained at Tuna 

Canyon, along with brief biographies of 

several detainees. The traveling exhibit also 

will include video interviews with detainees’ 

children, and a diorama of the Tuna Canyon 

Detention Station, which was torn down in 

1960. 

Recipient: Special Service for Groups (Los Angeles, 

CA)

Project Title: “A Flicker in Eternity” Interactive 

Curriculum: Teaching Stories of

 Confinement 

Grant Award: $20,000

Site(s): Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park 

 County, WY; Manzanar Relocation Center, 

 Inyo County, CA

Description: Special Service for Groups, a non-profit 

health and human service organization, 

will partner with Kizuna, a communitybased non-profit organization, to create an 

interactive educational curriculum to teach 

more than 300 elementary through collegeaged students about the history of Japanese 

American incarceration during World War 

II. Workshops will utilize Sharon Yamato’s A 

Flicker in Eternity, a film that chronicles the 

life of Stanley Hayami, a Japanese American 

teenager incarcerated at Heart Mountain, to 

engage students through hands-on learning 

activities and discussions. The curriculum 

and workshops will be implemented at 

former Japanese American incarceration sites, 

Japanese American community centers, and 

made available online. 

Barracks interior, Tuna Canyon, 1943. Photo courtesy: Merrill H. Scott 

Family and Little Landers Historical Society

Stanley Hayami on furlough at Heart Mountain, December 1944. 

Photo courtesy: Hayami Family
8

COLORADO

Recipient: University of Colorado, Denver (Denver, CO) 

Project Title: Amache 3D Digital Documentation 

Grant Award: $24,202

Site(s): Granada Relocation Center (Amache), 

 Prowers County, CO

Description: The University of Colorado Denver’s Center for 

Preservation Research will use LiDAR scanning 

technology to produce a complete 3D digital 

model of the existing landscape, buildings, 

and site features at Amache. In addition, the 

University will produce 3D images of buildings 

that were removed from the site upon the camps 

closure. The 3D digital scans, panoramas, and 

data will serve as powerful tools to inform future 

research and preservation efforts. 

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Recipient: National Trust for Historic Preservation 

(Washington, DC)

Project Title: Left Behind: Documenting the Japanese 

 American Collections at Seattle’s Panama 

 Hotel 

Grant Award: $137,178

Site(s): Minidoka Relocation Center, Jerome County, ID

Description: The National Trust for Historic Preservation 

will inventory, catalog, and photograph 

personal belongings stored in the basement 

of the Panama Hotel by Japanese Americans 

who could only take what they could carry 

with them to the incarceration sites. Prior to 

World War II, the Panama Hotel in the heart 

of Seattle’s Japantown was a central gathering 

place for the Japanese immigrant community. 

After the war, many Japanese Americans 

never returned to the hotel to retrieve their 

belongings. The National Trust will partner 

with the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian 

Pacific American Experience to evaluate 

the significance of these objects, develop a 

collections hierarchy to guide the next steps for 

their preservation and interpretation, and create 

a searchable database of these personal items. 

Amache (Granada) incarceration site in southeastern Colorado. 

Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-159-210), George Ochikubo 

Collection

Belongings hurriedly left in the basement of the Panama Hotel will be 

inventoried and photographed as part of the National Trust’s grant 

project. Photo courtesy: National Trust for Historic Preservation

National Park Service
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

9

HAWAI’I

Recipient: Friends of Waipahu Cultural Garden Park (aka 

 Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village) (Waipahu, HI)

Project Title: Phase Two, Administration Building 

 Construction Documents, Student

 Participation and Exhibit 

Grant Award: $112,000

Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, HI

Description: Friends of Waipahu Cultural Garden Park (aka 

Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village) will work with an 

architect and university students to produce 

construction documents to demonstrate how 

an administration building, believed to be a 

guard house, could be restored at the Honouliuli 

Internment Site. The project builds on a 2009 

JACS grant for an Existing Conditions Report 

that documented the two remaining buildings 

at Honouliuli. A museum exhibit focusing on 

restoration efforts and the history of Honouliuli 

also will be assembled at the Friends of Cultural 

Garden Park in O‘ahu.

Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (Honolulu, HI)

Project Title: Hawai‘i Japanese American Internment: Short 

Documentaries on the Hawai‘i Counties of 

Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, Hawai‘i, and Maui

Grant Award: $215,502

Site(s): 17 internment sites on the islands of Hawai‘i, 

Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, Maui, Moloka‘i, and Lana‘i

Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i will 

produce a four-part documentary sequel to The 

Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans 

in Hawai‘i, which was produced in 2012 through 

a JACS grant. The sequel will comprise four, 

15-minute films, focusing on 17 Japanese American 

internment sites dispersed throughout the islands of 

Hawai‘i, Kaua‘i, O‘ahu, Maui, Moloka‘i, and Lana‘i. 

A one-hour-long DVD of the films will be created 

and posted online, and 500 copies distributed to 

partnering organizations and schools.

Honouliuli Internment Camp Administrative Area, ca. 1945. Photo 

courtesy: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i/ Photograph by R.H. 

Lodge, JCCH/AR 19 Collection

Original caption: “Germany. Pfc. William Wada of Blanca, Colo., 

after being awarded the Bronze Star Medal, is congratulated by 

Brig. Gen. Ralph M. Immel, CG, Continental Advance Section. Pfc. 

Wada received the award for outstanding and heroic achievement 

in action with the 100th Inf. Bn. 1 June 1945.” Photo courtesy: 

Densho (ddr-densho-114-34), Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee and 

the U.S. Army
National Park Service

10

Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (Honolulu, 

HI)

Project Title: The Power of Place: The Archaeology of 

Hawai‘i’s Internment Sites

Grant Award: $38,600

Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, 

HI; Haiku Camp, Maui County; Kalaheo 

Stockade, Kauai County; and other internment 

sites in Hawai‘i 

Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i 

will produce a comprehensive report that 

combines existing archaeological studies about 

Hawai‘i’s internment sites with new field work 

to identify, record and map newly discovered 

sites and features. The manuscript will be 

illustrated with photographs and maps, and 

will include an annotated list of useful archives 

and repositories, as well as Geographical 

Information System (GIS) data on Honouliuli.

NEW YORK

Recipient: Asian CineVision, Inc. (New York, NY)

Project Title: The Orange Story: A Cinematic Digital 

History Project 

Grant Award: $159,548 

Site(s): Multiple Sites, including Merced Assembly 

 Center, Merced County, CA; Granada 

 Relocation Center (Amache), Prowers County, CO 

Description: Asian CineVision, Inc., will produce The 

Orange Story, a 15-minute film portraying an 

historical re-enactment of a day in the life of 

one Japanese American forced to move from his 

home and sell his business before being sent to 

an incarceration site during World War II. The 

film will be available on a website that also will 

include educators’ tools and resources, such 

as an interactive timeline, annotated historical 

photos, and critical essays related to the 

Japanese American World War II incarceration. 

The film will be presented to a wide range of 

audiences through public programming and 

other avenues, including film festivals and 

screenings at colleges and universities.

Japanese American families wait for a train to take them from 

Woodland, California to the Merced Assembly Center, about 125 

miles away, May 20, 1942. Photo courtesy: National Archives and 

Records Administration, Photo by Dorothea Lange
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

11

A snowball fight in Minidoka incarceration site, Idaho. Photo 

courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-243-5), Suzuki Family Collection

Recipient: WNET (New York, NY)

Project Title: Mission US: “Prisoner in My Homeland”

Grant Award: $400,000

Site(s): Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County, WA; 

 Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo

 County, CA; Minidoka Relocation Center, 

 Jerome County, ID

Description: WNET, a public media station, will produce 

an online educational video game that places 

students in the role of a Japanese American 

teenage boy who must make choices as he 

and his family are forced to leave their home 

on Bainbridge Island, Washington, for one of 

the “temporary detention centers” and then 

to one of ten WRA incarceration sites during 

World War II. The game, “Prisoner in My 

Homeland,” builds on WNET’s Mission US 

series, an award-winning group of online video 

games designed to increase young people’s 

understanding of U.S. history. “Prisoner in 

My Homeland” and accompanying classroom 

materials will be accessible for free through any 

web browser and designed so teachers can fit 

segments into a typical classroom period.

TEXAS

Recipient: Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, 

Inc. (Austin, TX)

Project Title: Seagoville Internment Camp: Detainee 

 Mural and “Japanese Colony” Study

Grant Award: $16,000

Site(s): Seagoville Internment Camp (INS Detention 

Station), Dallas County, TX

Description: Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, 

Inc., will complete a condition assessment and 

develop a restoration plan for a fading mural 

that was painted by an internee in the former 

Department of Justice Seagoville Enemy Alien 

Detention Station, used to detain Japanese, 

German, Italian, and others deemed “enemy 

aliens” during World War II. The project 

also includes preparation of a history of the 

approximately 250 Japanese Latin Americans 

interned at Seagoville, which will be shared 

through interpretive banners displayed onsite, at the local public library, and on the Texas 

Historical Commission website.

Aerial view of Seagoville taken in 1947 looks much as it did during 

the war, except for the plywood hut family quarters, which had 

been removed. Photo courtesy: National Archives and Records 

Administration (Record Group 129-G, Box 18) 
National Park Service

12

WASHINGTON

Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)

Project Title: Confinement Sites Encyclopedia Enhanced 

for Education 

Grant Award: $236,777

Site(s): Multiple Sites

Description: Densho will enhance its online encyclopedia 

with 350 new articles; a detailed tagging and 

categorization of 587 encyclopedia articles by 

subject, reading level, and other variables; a 

resource finder application that allows users 

to create lists of resources that match specific 

criteria; and create links to approximately 

100 digitized books, videos, and curricula. 

The encyclopedia includes more than 1,100 

multimedia articles written by scholars and 

researchers of Japanese American history.

Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA) 

Project Title: Making Connections with the Japanese 

American Incarceration 

Grant Award: $131,574

Site(s): Multiple Sites

Description: Densho will partner with the Holocaust 

Center for Humanity, the Northwest African 

American Museum, and the United Indians of 

All Tribes Foundation to create an educational 

curriculum and teacher-training workshop that 

connects the Japanese American exclusion and 

incarceration story with other historical events 

of civil and human rights violations. Densho 

will host at least four professional development 

workshops to train approximately 100 teachers 

on how to implement this curriculum in their 

classrooms. The finalized curriculum will 

be published on Densho’s Learning Center 

website. 

Barracks at Jerome incarceration site in Arkansas. Photo courtesy: 

Densho (ddr-densho-187-3), Courtesy of Ben Arikawa 

Hide Yasutake, her children May and Joe, and a Nisei soldier stand 

outside their barracks in Block 4, Apartment C at the Minidoka 

incarceration site in Idaho. Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-118-13), 

Yasutake Family Collection
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

13

WYOMING 

Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation 

(Powell, WY)

Project Title: Heart Mountain Root Cellar, Phase II: 

 Emergency Stabilization 

Grant Award: $90,500

Site(s): Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park County, 

WY

Description: The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation 

will stabilize the severely deteriorating 35’ x 

312’ root cellar originally used by incarcerees 

to store produce. This project builds on 

a 2013 JACS grant that enabled the Heart 

Mountain, Wyoming Foundation to acquire 

the root cellar, assess its condition, and begin 

interim stabilization. Phase II will complete 

the emergency stabilization and address issues 

noted in the condition assessment report, 

such as deterioration of the wood framing and 

weakening of the earthen roof. 

Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation 

(Powell, WY)

Project Title: Japanese American Confinement Sites 

 Consortium 

Grant Award: $28,639

Site(s): Multiple Sites

Description: The Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation, 

in partnership with the Japanese American 

National Museum, will convene two meetings 

to bring together a consortium of leaders 

representing confinement sites and key 

organizations working to preserve the sites 

and history related to the Japanese American 

World War II incarceration. The first meeting 

took place during the 2015 pilgrimage at Heart 

Mountain; the second will be held in 2016 in 

Washington, D.C. The meetings will provide 

an opportunity for leaders and stakeholders to 

strengthen their relationships and capacity by 

sharing information and resources.

Ventilation in the roof of one of two root cellars built at the Heart 

Mountain Relocation Center. Photo by Hikaru Iwasaki, November 23, 

1943. Photo courtesy: The Bancroft Library, University of California, 

Berkeley 

Roof of one of the remaining root cellars at Heart Mountain. Photo 

courtesy: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, photo by Brian 

Liesinger 
14

National Park Service

GRANT FUNDING BY STATE

This map shows total (2009 - 2015) Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program funding by the states where the grantees are located. Also shown (with red symbols) are the Japanese American confinement sites that are the specific focus of those grant funds. In some cases, the grantee is in a different state than that of the confinement sites. For example, the Poston Community Alliance, which is in California, received funding to stabilize historic elementary 

school buildings at the Colorado River (Poston) Relocation Center in Arizona. In addition, some projects generally benefit all confinement sites and/or interpret the overall Japanese American incarceration experience. While this map shows the location of those grantees, it does not show every confinement site that benefits from those general projects.
15

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

GRANT FUNDING BY SITE

This graph shows total (2009-2015) Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program funding by confinement site. Listed is each site that is the focus of a grant project. The last bar in the graph shows 

funding for general projects that benefit multiple sites – four or more – and/or interpret the overall Japanese American incarceration experience. 

 $-

 $4,000,000 $3,000,000 $2,000,000 $1,000,000

$291,942 

$18,698 

$828,065 

$1,836,858 

$284,517 $348,480 

$1,198,597 

$1,542,605 

$1,339,704 

$885,640 

$25,573 

$216,144 

$64,019 $89,730 

$549,229 

$414,915 

$46,764 

$290,000 

$40,000 $5,000 $25,000 $38,909 

$243,941 

$67,537 

$100,000 $96,147 $102,190 $50,000 

$7,162,164 

War Relocation Authority Camps

Funding By Confinement Sites 2009-2015

$7,200,000
16

National Park Service

Following is an overview of projects successfully completed during Fiscal Year 2015. These stories 

reflect the dedicated commitment and hard work of numerous groups to preserve, interpret and 

disseminate the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. 

COMPLETED PROJECTS HIGHLIGHTED DURING FISCAL YEAR 2015

From 1910 to 1940, tens of thousands of immigrants, primarily 

from countries in Asia, entered the United States through the 

Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. After 

the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Angel Island took on a new role as 

an intake center for prisoners of war and a processing center for 

Japanese Americans from Hawai‘i. It also became a temporary 

detention center for, among others, 600 Hawai‘i Issei and about 

100 from the West Coast who, by law, were ineligible for U.S. 

citizenship. It was not until 1952 that Issei (first generation 

Japanese immigrants) could become naturalized U.S. citizens.

With the help of a 2012 NPS JACS grant of $25,573, the Angel 

Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) created a website 

that tells the stories of the World War II detainees at Angel Island. 

The website lists the names of more than 700 people who were 

detained at Angel Island, including Yasutaro Soga, a prominent 

Issei journalist who had been living in Hawai‘i for 45 years when 

he was arrested on the night of December 7, 1941. “I am living 

here two-thirds of my life,” he told authorities. His family, his 

job, his property were in Hawai‘i. “So if anything,” Soga told 

them, “I am for America.” 

Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Creates Website to Share Stories of 

Japanese American Detainees on Angel Island

Yasutaro Soga photographed in captivity in Hawai‘i. Photo courtesy: 

National Archives and Records Administration, College Park 

George Hoshida’s ink and watercolor drawing of Ayala Cove at Angel 

Island, San Francisco Bay shows the dormitories of the quarantined on the 

shoreline. Photo courtesy: Gift of June Hoshida Honma, Sandra Hoshida, 

and Carole Hoshida Kanada, Japanese American National Museum 

[97.106.1W] 

The website also lists close to 100 men from Hawai‘i who 

were detained at Sharp Park, south of San Francisco. 

George Hoshida, a native of Kumamoto, Japan, was living 

with his family in Hilo, Hawai‘i, when he was arrested 

on February 6, 1942, and shipped to Angel Island. An 

informant had pointed to Hoshida’s involvement with a 

judo association and a Buddhist group as proof that he was 

“pro-Japanese.” When questioned by authorities, Hoshida 

spoke of the sadness and pain he felt “to see my two loved 

countries injuring each other....” He also pointed out that 

his wife and daughters were U.S. citizens by birth, and that 

he, too, would have become a citizen had it been allowed. 

Apart from the grant-funded information on detainees, the 

AIISF website (www.aiisf.org/education/station-history/

jacs) also examines Angel Island’s pre-war immigration 

history, including the poetry written or carved into its 

barracks walls by Chinese immigrants who were frustrated 

by long processing delays. The website also invites readers 

to share their own immigration stories.
17

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto Wong (royal blue kimono) stands next 

to Sahomi Tachibana (center, purple kimono) and her current buyo 

students. Projected in the background is a photo of Tachibana and her 

students at Tule Lake. Photo courtesy: Robert C. Wong

Sahomi Tachibana (front row, center) and her buyo classical dance 

group pose in front of a backdrop of Tule Lake’s Castle Rock, 

painted by artist Enjiro Kodani. Photo courtesy: Sahomi Tachibana, 

photographer unknown

When more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned 

by their own country during World War II, many found solace 

in traditional Japanese arts such as kabuki theater, classical buyo

dance, koto performance, and Obon Odori. With a 2012 NPS 

JACS grant of $138,586, East Bay Center for the Performing 

Arts in Richmond, California, tells this lesser-known story of 

music, dance, and drama in a new documentary titled Hidden 

Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the World War 

II Internment Camps. The preservation of Japanese cultural 

arts during wartime helped to ensure the survival of Japanese 

traditions in the United States today. 

Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto-Wong, the film’s creative director, 

identified musicians, performers, and drama groups from 

nine of the ten War Relocation Authority (WRA) centers 

and the filmmakers traveled throughout California, Idaho, 

Wyoming, and even Japan to conduct more than 30 interviews. 

Muramoto-Wong, herself, learned to play the koto from her 

mother, who discovered the stringed instrument at Topaz and 

Tule Lake. Performance footage and historic photographs were 

used to illustrate the interviewees’ feelings about camp, how 

they learned or taught the arts while incarcerated, and the 

comfort found in the traditional arts. Muramoto-Wong also 

explained that the arts helped incarcerees manage the anger that 

many kept inside. “If you’re playing an instrument, or you’re 

doing a dance, or you’re singing,” she says, “you’re able to 

express some of these feelings in a way that’s acceptable to the 

culture.”

Interviewee Mary Arii Mah, also known by her professional 

dance title, Bando Misayasu, carried forward the flame that 

was passed down from her great-grandparents who performed 

kabuki before World War II, to her grandfather who learned 

Noh chanting in camp, to her mother who learned nagauta 

shamisen at Gila River. Arii Mah also used these arts to teach 

her children Japanese etiquette. “I do believe that it has helped 

them in mainstream society,” she shared, “to be respectful, to be 

thankful, to be grateful, and I think it has served them well.” 

Since September 2014, Hidden Legacy has aired on 28 public 

television stations from Hawai‘i to Ontario, Canada—reaching 

millions of viewers. The East Bay Center also sent DVDs of the 

film to the interpretive centers or groups connected to the ten 

WRA incarceration sites, and created a website (www.jcalegacy.

com) that includes information about the film, including media 

stories and behind-the-scenes photos. The East Bay Center 

also held nearly 30 screenings across the country, plus six 

at universities in Tokyo and Kyoto, Japan. Public television 

stations throughout the country continue to broadcast the 

documentary. 

East Bay Center for the Performing Arts Shares Hidden Legacy of Japanese 

Traditional Arts in New Documentary
National Park Service

18

Densho, a Seattle-based non-profit organization 

dedicated to preserving, educating, and sharing the 

story of the World War II-era incarceration of Japanese 

Americans, completed three JACS-funded projects 

that make primary materials more accessible to the 

general public, as well as to teachers, who can use these 

materials to bring history alive in their classrooms. 

Densho Completes Online Course for 

Teachers 

With a 2013 NPS JACS grant of $194,403, Densho 

launched a new course, Teach the Teachers-Online. The 

self-paced, five-hour course integrates components of 

Densho’s already successful Teach the Teachers project, 

which has included training workshops for hundreds 

of teachers. The online version was based on a 

previous JACS-funded Teach the Teachers workshop 

grant and has a goal of reaching 1,000 teachers, 

including many who might not be able to attend a 

workshop in person.

To help create the course, Densho recruited 16 high 

school students for an all-day workshop. As the 

camera rolled, an instructor led the students in a series 

of learning activities, thus demonstrating for other 

teachers how to use primary sources in the classroom. 

The course includes 13 videos and six interactive 

activities, including “thinking routines” where students 

examine images in political cartoons and words and 

phrases in primary documents. 

“In all my years in education and taking professional 

development online courses,” one teacher commented, 

“this course is the most powerful lesson I have ever 

done. It impacted me professionally (fantastic teaching 

strategies I will incorporate into my lessons) and 

emotionally (social injustices, so easy to bury your 

head in the sand).”

As part of the project, and to help publicize the online 

course, Densho produced a full-color, eight-page 

educational supplement that was inserted in the April 

12, 2015, edition of The Seattle Times. The 250,000-copy 

run includes detailed graphics and stories that illustrate 

the tensions that led to Executive Order 9066, the 

personal stories of Japanese Americans Akiko Kurose and 

Shosuke Sasaki, and the lessons learned from the unjust 

wartime incarceration.

Densho Expands Reach of Teacher Training and Enhances Online Collection 

with Three NPS Grants

Densho’s online course provides teachers with educational tools. 

Image courtesy: Densho 

Densho’s extensive digital repository includes newly added historic documents 

such as this group photo in front of the Topaz Community Cooperative 

Enterprises building. Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-292-2), Nishioka 

Family Collection 
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

19

Densho Adds 55,000 Items to Online 

Repository 

“Primary sources” – documents and objects created 

by people who lived through an experience – are 

the raw material of history. These sources, such as 

personal letters, family photographs, home movies, 

and historic newsreels, are like voices from the past, 

allowing us to listen in. 

With a 2013 NPS JACS grant of $300,000, Densho 

added about 55,000 historic photographs, 

documents, and video testimonials to its already 

extensive digital archives and repository. To capture 

these additional primary source materials, Densho 

set up scanning and cataloging stations in Los 

Angeles, Honolulu, and Seattle, and processed key 

collections from the Japanese American National 

Museum (JANM); the Honolulu newspaper, Nippu 

Jiji; and the Los Angeles-based Pacific Citizen, 

which has been publishing news about the Japanese 

American community since September 1929. 

Nearly 30,000 photographs were digitized from the 

Nippu Jiji (translated “newspaper for telling timely 

news”). Founded in 1895, the Nippu Jiji was once 

the most significant Japanese American newspaper 

in Hawai‘i. When the newspaper closed in 1985, 

University of Hawai‘i Professor Dennis Ogawa 

rescued its photo collection from a dumpster. 

Ogawa made the photos available to Densho for this 

project. Images of all the primary source materials 

are now available on Densho’s free, online archive, 

with links to the Densho Encyclopedia at http://ddr.

densho.org/.

Densho Adds 691 Articles to Online 

Encyclopedia

Densho also used a separate 2012 JACS grant of 

$362,450, to add 691 new articles to its free, online 

encyclopedia, which now includes more than one 

thousand articles written by 80 scholars, writers, 

and researchers on Japanese American World War II 

exclusion and incarceration history.

Newly added articles range from the story of wartime 

hostels to a look at dramatic films that either depict or 

mention the World War II incarceration of Japanese 

Americans. The encyclopedia includes photographs, 

maps, oral history testimonies, and a historical 

timeline, as well as reference citations and suggestions 

for further reading. The encyclopedia is available at 

Pacific Citizen Christmas 1945 Issue. Image courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-121-5), 

Pacific Citizen Collection

http://encyclopedia.densho.org/. In addition, highlighted 

articles are published to the Densho Blog (www.densho.org/

blog/), where a reader might find a book review, a Q&A with 

an artist, or a particularly noteworthy article. 

Reflecting on all of the support that has made Densho 

successful as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, Executive 

Director Tom Ikeda noted, “This recent round of JACS 

funding has been particularly helpful in preserving the 

documents and objects created by people who lived 

through the World War II Japanese American incarceration 

experience, providing context to these raw materials of 

history, and educating teachers and students by using these 

rich primary sources.”
National Park Service

20

Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc., Uncovers Artifacts at Crystal City 

Family Internment Camp

Students in front of the school at Crystal City. Back row, fourth from left is 

Emiko, a Japanese American Nisei, who volunteered to teach English. All 

other students are Japanese Peruvians. Art Shibayama is in the front row, 

fourth from left. Photo courtesy: Densho (ddr-densho-91-7), A. Shibayama 

Family Collection

Archeologists unearth a toy marble (see inset) near the foundation 

of the school at Crystal City. Photo courtesy: Texas Historical 

Commission, photo by William McWhorter; photo of marble 

courtesy of Hicks and Company

Following World War II, the Department of Justice 

Internment Camp at Crystal City, Texas, was closed and most 

of the structures demolished. Today, remnants of concrete 

foundations can still be found – reminders of Japanese, 

German, and Italian “enemy aliens” who were living in the 

United States or Latin America, and then held at Crystal 

City. At the time, Crystal City was the largest Immigration 

and Naturalization Service-administered site in the nation, 

housing at its peak more than 3,300 individuals. 

“Enemy aliens,” and often their American-born families, 

were interned at Crystal City, which was established to house 

families together and to reunite families whose members had 

been moved to separate facilities. German aliens and their 

families were the first to arrive in December 1942. In March 

1943, the first Japanese aliens arrived at Crystal City. Each 

ethnic group was held in a separate area within the camp. 

To better understand the internment site at Crystal City, the 

Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc., with a 2012 

NPS JACS grant of $25,580, completed an archeological 

metal detector survey centered on the site’s former Japanese 

School and its swimming pool/irrigation reservoir, with two 

bathhouses; one used by Japanese internees, and the other for 

German and Italian internees. 

A metal detection team from Hicks & Company of Austin, 

Texas, conducted the survey in April 2013 and turned up 

248 “hits.” After targeted shovel tests, the team found items, 

including green plastic fragments of camp scrip, a marble, 

Camp scrip from Crystal City, 

Texas. Image courtesy: Texas 

Historical Commission

and a glass shard with a “Pepsi-Cola” logo that could be 

linked with the internment site. The artifacts speak to 

life behind the 10-foot-high, barbed wire fence at Crystal 

City, where children attended school and played games, 

and where adults worked. Internees earned 10 cents an 

hour, paid in camp scrip – tokens made of pressed paper 

or plastic. The “West Virginia Swirl” marble, likely a 

Cairo Novelty or Alley Agate type, dates to the late 1930s 

or 1940s and was found next to the school. 

The internment site’s irrigation reservoir also served as 

a swimming pool. Using auger probes, the survey team 

located the concrete, circular deck that surrounded the 

pool’s outer rim and the concrete remnants of the two 

bathhouses located in the pool area. 

William McWhorter of the Texas Historical Commission 

directed the survey project and, as part of this grant, 

successfully nominated the historic site to the National 

Register of Historic Places in August 2014. 
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

21

Heart Mountain, Wyoming Foundation Extends Reach of Incarceration Story 

with New Website

Images in the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center archives 

in Wyoming are now available on Densho’s online 

repository. Photo courtesy: Courtesy of Yoshio Okumoto, 

Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, Densho Digital 

Repository (ddr-hmwf-1-164)

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation provides greater access to the former 

incarceration site with a revamped, interactive website. Image courtesy: Heart Mountain 

Wyoming Foundation

With a 2012 NPS JACS grant of $30,976, the Heart 

Mountain, Wyoming Foundation (HMWF) has 

redeveloped its website about the Heart Mountain 

incarceration site, with a virtual tour, curriculum 

materials, and access to certain collections in its 

archive. The revamped, state-of-the-art website, 

located at heartmountain.org, complements the 

Heart Mountain Interpretive Center in Powell, 

Wyoming, which opened in August 2011 and 

draws nearly 15,000 visitors each year. Along with 

assisting researchers, teachers, students, and other 

visitors to Heart Mountain, the website brings the 

lessons of Japanese American incarceration to 

people who cannot visit the remote site.

The HMWF worked with Big Idea Advertising 

to conceptualize the new website and develop its 

appearance, organization, and features, including 

search engine optimization. As part of the project, 

HMWF Education and Archives Assistant Kathryn McKee digitized 

archival material and created a finding aid. Among the materials 

scanned was the entire Okumoto Collection, which includes 1,333 

photographs taken by Yoshio Okumoto while he was incarcerated at 

Heart Mountain. Also as part of the project, the HMWF partnered 

with Densho to make 544 of the Okumoto images available 

through the Densho website. While scanning, McKee also found 

several photos in the HMWF archive that are related to sports and 

recreational activities, inspiring her to create an exhibit on sports at 

Heart Mountain titled, Playing the Game, which ran from February 

1 to April 30, 2014. 

The JACS grant also funded the creation of grade-specific, 

interactive, K-12 curriculum that is available through the website. 

Teachers and students now have access to suggested readings, 

downloadable curriculum and activities, and information about field 

trips, site visits, and off-site presentations. 

Heart Mountain’s history, news and events, educational content, 

virtual tour, online store, access to archival material, and virtual 

connections to other historical sites, museums, and collections, 

now provide a rich experience to a far larger number of people 

than those who can visit the site. And, with links to the HMWF’s 

Facebook and Twitter feed, the site’s social media presence and 

reach continues to grow.

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
National Park Service

22

Japanese American Citizens League’s Bridging Communities Program Expands 

to Chicago

Participants from Chicago visit the Rohwer Relocation Center Memorial 

Cemetery. Photo courtesy: CAIR-Chicago

Students gather for a group photo outside Little Rock Central High School 

National Historic Site during the “Bridging Communities” program visit.

Photo courtesy: CAIR-Chicago 

National Park Service

With a 2012 NPS JACS grant of $150,130, the Japanese 

American Citizens League engaged students in its “Bridging 

Communities: Preserving the Legacy” program in San 

Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles, and also developed a new, 

Chicago-based program in partnership with the Council on 

American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). 

Bridging Communities is a program of educational workshops 

that links the World War II incarceration of Japanese 

Americans to civil rights issues of today, including incidents 

of hate and intolerance directed at American Muslims in the 

aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 

To initiate the new program in Chicago, 16 high school 

students and five chaperones traveled to Arkansas in March 

2015. There they visited the Rohwer incarceration site and 

the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum 

in McGehee, the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies in Little 

Rock, and the Little Rock Central High National Historic 

Site. At the Butler Center, students examined artifacts created 

by incarcerees at Rohwer and Jerome, and heard the story of 

Richard Yada, a Japanese American who was born at Rohwer 

after his family was removed from California. At Little Rock 

Central High, they learned about the struggles faced by nine 

African American students who enrolled in the previously allwhite school in 1957.

Those in the greater Los Angeles area participated in two 

educational retreats and made a pilgrimage to Manzanar 

National Historic Site in March 2014, while those in Seattle 

visited the Bainbridge Island Japanese American 

Exclusion Memorial and interviewed members of the 

Japanese American community who were removed from 

the island and incarcerated. The interviews they recorded 

will be used to create an educational video. In June 2013, 

San Francisco students engaged in a four-day Youth 

Leadership Summit at the Tule Lake Unit of World War II 

Valor in the Pacific National Monument. In discussions 

afterward, students shared their reflections and discussed 

ways in which they could preserve the Tule Lake story 

through on-site resource documentation. Participant 

Nina Abshar, age 16, told the Rafu Shimpo newspaper that 

the program helped her to understand the importance 

of having “compassion and empathy for communities 

that may not be our own, and realize that we are all more 

connected than we think.”
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

23

Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i Uses Two NPS Grants to Engage Public with 

New Curriculum and Virtual Tour that Explores Hawai‘i’s Internment History

For many years, the history of Hawai‘i’s internment 

sites was unknown to many except for those who 

were interned there during World War II and their 

families. Over the past 17 years, the Japanese 

Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (JCCH) has persistently 

worked to document these sites and to reveal 

the stories they hold, continuing with the recent 

development of a high school education project and 

virtual tour. 

With a 2012 NPS JACS grant of $64,795, JCCH 

developed an educational project that challenged 

high school students to apply lessons from 

Hawai‘i’s unique internment history to current 

human and civil rights issues. JCCH provided 

sixteen private and public high schools with 

online curriculum focused on internment history, 

gave tours of Honouliuli to 440 students, and 

assisted students with projects that delved into 

issues of race, injustice, violence, bullying, and 

democracy. Keala Parker-Lee, a 2014 graduate of 

Sacred Hearts Academy remarked, “Seeing the 

remnants of buildings [at Honouliuli] and hearing 

true stories of families who went through this 

traumatic experience taught me that we must stand 

up to social injustice.” Due to its success, many 

participating schools plan to continue aspects of 

the project with their own funding. 

With a separate 2013 NPS JACS grant of $111,557, 

JCCH designed a web-based virtual tour to 

allow students, researchers, and the general 

public greater access to Honouliuli. The website 

(www.honouliulivirtualtour.com) features nine 

videos that provide a visual overview of the 

site’s history and key features. The virtual tour 

also includes maps with embedded current and 

historic photographs. JCCH also created an iOS 

application to supplement the docent walking 

tours of Honouliuli. Visitors use mini iPads to see 

historic photos and listen to oral histories as they 

tour the site. In February 2015, President Barrack 

Obama designated Honouliuli as a National 

Monument, underscoring the work of JCCH and 

others to preserve and tell the history of Japanese 

American internment in Hawai‘i.

JCCH’s website provides a virtual window into the history of Honouliuli and what remains 

of the site. Image courtesy: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i 

JCCH teaches students about the significance of the Honouliuli site. Photo courtesy: 

Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i 

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
National Park Service

24

Between 1942 and 1946, 29,490 Japanese Americans were 

incarcerated at Tule Lake in California, representing nearly 

one fourth of the 120,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated 

during World War II. However, a critical lack of educational 

resources existed about Tule Lake. With a 2013 NPS JACS 

grant of $73,675, the National Japanese American Historical 

Society (NJAHS) used newly accessible primary documents, 

secondary sources, photographs, oral histories, and artifacts 

to develop a web-based curriculum for grades 4-12. By 

illuminating the stories and experiences of those who lived 

behind barbed wire at Tule Lake, the lesson plans ask students 

to think critically about the Japanese American experience 

during World War II and how it connects to events today. 

To produce the curriculum, NJAHS recruited a core group 

of 13 teachers from four cities near Japanese American 

incarceration sites—Los Angeles (Manzanar), Seattle 

(Bainbridge Island), Salt Lake City (Topaz), and the San 

Francisco Bay Area (Tule Lake). Working in collaboration 

with curriculum specialists from Stanford University, the 

University of California, Berkeley, and the NPS, the teachers 

developed 16 lesson plans under four units of study: high 

school journalism, high school history, middle school, and 

elementary school. NJAHS presented the curriculum to 12 

teachers at the 2014 Tule Lake Pilgrimage, then revised and 

piloted the lessons throughout the next school year. Teachers 

can access the final plans, which include a teacher guide, 

primary and secondary documents, PowerPoint presentations, 

and student handouts, at www.njahs.org/tule-lake. 

With a second 2013 NPS JACS grant of $33,467, NJAHS 

documented and digitized 206 objects from its collection. 

Historians and researchers find the collection invaluable 

for its camp life artifacts—objects collected and created by 

Japanese Americans while incarcerated, as well as objects 

brought to and used in camp. NJAHS partnered with the 

University of San Francisco (USF) Museum Studies program 

where 39 graduate students documented, researched, 

catalogued, and digitized the objects as part of two university 

courses. NJAHS then made its collection publicly accessible 

by posting it to the USF Gleeson Library Digital Collections 

website. The digital collection, found online at www.njahs.

org/confinementsites, now includes artifacts from all 10 War 

Relocation Authority incarceration sites, as well as Tanforan 

“assembly center,” Santa Fe Internment Camp (Department 

of Justice), and Lordsburg Internment Camp (U.S. Army). 

National Japanese American Historical Society Develops Curriculum and Expands 

Digital Collection with Two NPS Grants

A white handkerchief drawn and signed by Japanese Americans 

incarcerated at Santa Fe Internment Camp (Department of Justice). Image 

courtesy: National Japanese American Historical Society

NJAHS’ curriculum connects students with the complex history of 

Tule Lake. Image courtesy: National Japanese American Historical 

Society

National Park Service
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

25

Junko Kimura, younger sister of Asako Tokuno and Meriko Maida, 

shares her memories of being uprooted from Richmond, CA and sent 

to the Topaz incarceration site in Utah. Image Courtesy: Oral History 

Center of The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley

Junko Kimura at graduation from Topaz, ca. 1944. Photo courtesy: 

Meriko Maida 

An extensive oral history collection at the Oral History 

Center of The Bancroft Library, University of California 

(UC), Berkeley, details the experiences of those working in 

the defense industry on the home front in the United States 

during World War II. The Center was previously known as 

the Regional Oral History Office, or ROHO. With a 2011 

NPS JACS grant of $50,000, the Center expanded upon this 

initial focus to include experiences of Japanese Americans 

who were incarcerated during the war.

The project team collaborated with the Japanese American 

Women Alumnae of UC Berkeley and other alumni, 

university, and community groups, and reached out through 

the media to locate 14 Japanese American interviewees, 

most of whom were graduates of UC Berkeley. UC Berkeley 

alum, Asako Tokuno, was preparing for finals on the day 

Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. “It was such dreadful news. 

Of course, no one knew what was going to happen,” she 

remembers. “We probably all thought the worst, but never 

dreamed the kind of thing that did happen.” The next May, 

she and her sister were bused to Tanforan and eventually 

incarcerated at Topaz.

Two of the interviewees were Deaf—their interviews 

conducted in American Sign Language. On that December 

day in 1941, “we Deaf couldn’t hear what others were 

saying,” explained interviewee Nancy Ikeda Baldwin, whose 

mother, father, and four siblings were all Deaf. “We were 

completely dependent on our aunt and uncle to tell us what 

was happening.” While incarcerated at Rohwer in Arkansas, 

Baldwin says other incarcerees would try to communicate 

with them, but overall, she says her family was “pretty much 

alone because others didn’t know sign language. As a Deaf 

family we stayed together.” 

The 14 interviews can be accessed in a variety of ways—

video oral histories with high quality audio and transcriptions 

were delivered to Rosie the Riveter World War II Home 

Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California, and 

The Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley. Transcripts and video 

excerpts are available at http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/ROHO/

projects/jacs/index.html. Stories from this project were 

also shared during a presentation at the 2015 Oral History 

Association Conference and will be incorporated into a 2016 

summer teacher workshop in partnership with the National 

Endowment for the Humanities. 

Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library Adds to World War II Homefront 

Collection

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
National Park Service

26

Ore-Cal Resource Conservation and Development Area Council Creates 

Traveling Art Exhibit on Tule Lake

The Art of Survival exhibit premieres at The Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Photo courtesy: Exhibit Envoy

Art has the power to transcend hardships, to dignify life, and to 

communicate what words cannot. With a 2013 NPS JACS grant 

of $123,890, Ore-Cal Resource Conservation and Development 

Area Council (Ore-Cal) developed a new traveling exhibit titled, 

The Art of Survival: Enduring the Turmoil of Tule Lake, which 

celebrates the power of art and the people who created it in the 

midst of wartime incarceration at the controversial Tule Lake 

Segregation Center. 

The exhibit features 42 framed contemporary black and 

white silver gelatin photographs of Tule Lake artifacts by the 

internationally-known photographer Hiroshi Watanabe. His 

haunting artwork portrays crafts and artifacts made from objects 

such as shells, scavenged lumber, and burlap sacks. Through these 

images, “we glimpse into the lives of those who were held at Tule 

Lake,” explained the exhibit’s creative director Madeleine Blake, 

“and are encouraged to consider both the orchestration of life 

behind barbed wire, and what it might have been like to live with 

constant turmoil and uncertainty.” The images are accompanied 

by historical photographs, text panels and banners, and select 

video oral histories with individuals who were incarcerated at Tule 

Lake. In addition to presenting daily life at the camp, the exhibit 

discusses wartime propaganda, the significance of terminology, 

and repositions the reputation of those segregated at Tule Lake, 

deemed “disloyal,” as truly American because they exercised their 

citizen’s right to protest. To share this story and exhibit details 

with a wide audience, Ore-Cal developed a website for the exhibit 

at www.artofsurvival.org.

National Park Service

The Art of Survival exhibit on display at the San Joaquin County 

Historical Society and Museum in Lodi, CA. Photo courtesy: Exhibit 

Envoy

Crane installation at The Art of Survival exhibit featured in Oregon’s 

Eugene Court House. Photo courtesy: Exhibit Envoy

In April 2014, The Art of Survival premiered at Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon, where it welcomed more than 

3,500 visitors in four months. Since its inaugural display, the exhibit has traveled throughout the western United States. 

This fall, Ore-Cal, NPS staff of the Tule Lake Unit of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, and other 

stakeholders in the region will discuss a permanent location for the exhibit so that this important story continues to be told. 
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

27

From 1942 to 1944, thousands of Japanese Americans 

were recruited by the federal government from temporary 

“assembly centers” and incarceration sites to work in farm 

labor camps across the western United States. Portlandbased historian Morgen Young, who interviewed the 

former labor camp workers, shared with the Pacific 

Citizen why many chose to work in the fields: “The Nisei 

kept reiterating that their parents wanted to get them 

away from the barbed wire.” In the summer of 1942, 

Farm Security Administration (FSA) photographer 

Russell Lee documented the camps near Nyssa, 

Oregon and Shelley, Rupert, and Twin Falls, Idaho, 

taking photographs of people in camp and at work, 

often harvesting sugar beets. A 2013 NPS JACS grant 

of $92,386, enabled the Oregon Cultural Heritage 

Commission (OCHC) to produce a traveling exhibit 

titled, Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps 

During World War II, which uses Lee’s photographs to 

share this chapter of U.S. history.

The exhibit displays 45 framed black-and-white 

photographs, each with two sets of captions—one from 

Russell Lee and one gleaned from surviving incarcerees 

and their families. The exhibit also features three text 

panels that place the photographs within the larger 

context of the FSA photography project and other 

Japanese American agricultural labor camps. The 

panels have Japanese and Spanish translations. The 

project includes two documentary videos, featuring 

oral histories with individuals who lived and worked 

in the labor camps. Interviewee Mathias Uchiyama 

was nine years old when his family learned of the farm 

labor camps. “‘We just can’t afford to [stay in camp],’” 

he recalls his father’s added impetus for leaving the 

Portland Assembly Center, “‘we’ll lose everything.’” 

Oral history transcripts were sent to the Japanese 

American National Museum in Los Angeles, Oregon 

Nikkei Legacy Center in Portland, Human Rights 

Education Institute in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Four 

Rivers Cultural Center in Ontario, Oregon. 

The first three showings of the exhibits were held in 

Ontario, Oregon; Rupert, Idaho; and Twin Falls, Idaho—

near three of the four farm labor camps featured in the 

exhibit, with more venues scheduled throughout the 

West Coast, including the Japanese American National 

Museum. The exhibit is in such high demand—booked 

through January 2018—that OCHC produced a second 

set of the exhibit. Janet Koda, the daughter of two former 

labor camp workers featured in the exhibit, found the 

exhibit to be a positive experience, telling the Pacific 

Citizen, “this exhibit was reconnecting people who had 

gone through something difficult together.” Oral histories, 

documentary videos, photographs, and the traveling 

exhibit schedule can be found on the project’s website: 

www.uprootedexhibit.com. 

Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission Produces Traveling Exhibit on Farm Labor 

Camps in the Pacific Northwest

Mathias Uchiyama shares his memories of living and working in a farm labor 

camp as a young boy. Photo courtesy: Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission

Taka Mizote and Aya Fujii share their experiences working on a farm labor 

camp as part of the Uprooted exhibit. Image Courtesy: Oregon Cultural 

Heritage Commission 

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
National Park Service

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Oregon Nikkei Endowment Documents Experiences of Portland’s Japanese 

Americans during World War II

When George Nakata was growing up in Portland, 

Oregon’s Nihonmachi (Japantown), he’d walk by 

the Sakano Jewelry Store and admire a watch in 

the window; it was a Mickey Mouse watch that 

miraculously became his one Christmas Day. 

In the video Finding Home, produced by Oregon Nikkei 

Endowment (ONE) with the help of a 2012 NPS JACS 

grant of $168,460, Nakata and three other Nikkei -- 

Jim Tsugawa, Jim Tsujimura, and Yoji J. Matsushima 

-- recount their boyhood years in and around Portland 

prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, as well as their 

later incarceration at Minidoka in Idaho. Two other 

videos were produced: Minidoka: An American Story, 

and A Community Spreads Its Wings. All three videos 

will be part of the permanent exhibit at the Oregon 

Nikkei Legacy Center in Portland (www.oregonnikkei.

org) and are available to educators, as well as the 

Minidoka National Historic Site and nearby Hagerman 

Fossil Beds National Monument. The JACS grant also 

resulted in the digital preservation of 45 existing video 

interviews and the creation of 30 new oral history 

interviews, all of which can be found on the Densho 

website under the Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection 

(http://archive.densho.org/main.aspx). 

“I was born in Portland, Oregon, around Nihonmachi,” 

Nakata tells the interviewer in one of the videos. On 

Christmas, he would reach in the pocket of his jacket and 

find a walnut. “And when I opened up the walnut, I’d find 

a quarter inside.” Jim Tsugawa recalls happy times when 

Oregon Nikkei Endowment volunteer, Alton Chung, interviews Jim Tsugawa 

for the Minidoka Oral History Project. Photo courtesy: Oregon Nikkei 

Endowment

he played marbles and went to the movies, where he 

watched Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, his favorite actors. 

The Nikkei were American boys whose parents had 

emigrated from Japan before their children were born. 

But after Pearl Harbor many like Jim Tsujimura found 

themselves on a train, destination unknown. “Curtains 

were all pulled down. They didn’t want us to look out,” 

Tsujimura remembered. “Took about three days to get 

where we were going, and it turned out to be Minidoka, 

Idaho.” 

Nakata says he will never forget the number given to 

his family at the Portland Assembly Center: No. 15066. 

“It was marked on our bag; it was marked on our tag; 

it was marked on our suitcase.” At Minidoka he got a 

second number 34-6-A (Block 34, Barrack 6). When the 

war ended, Nakata boarded a train for the ride back to 

Oregon. “The window shades were not down,” he says 

in the Finding Home video. “We could see.” As the train 

rolled through the Columbia River Gorge, he marveled 

at the beauty, and as he set foot in Portland, he searched 

for words to describe his feelings. “Just seeing the 

Willamette River; seeing the Burnside Bridge...We knew 

The Oregon Nikkei Endowment’s growing visual history collection is now our destination; we were going home.” 

available on Densho’s digital archive. Photo courtesy: Densho

National Park Service
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

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In May 2014, with the help of a 2012 NPS 

JACS grant of $714,314, the non-profit Topaz 

Museum Board completed construction of the 

Topaz Museum and Education Center located 

on Main Street in Delta, Utah. On January 13, 

2015, the museum featured an inaugural art 

exhibit: When Words Weren’t Enough: Works 

on Paper from Topaz 1942-1945. The exhibit 

highlights the work of artists incarcerated at 

Topaz, including Miné Okubo, Chiura Obata, 

Charles Erabu Suiko Mikami, Setsu Nagata 

Kanehara, and Matsusaburo George Hibi. 

The completion of the Topaz Museum and 

Education Center represents years of planning 

and fundraising by the Topaz Museum 

Board, which was incorporated in 1996 with 

the mission to preserve the Topaz site and 

establish a permanent museum. Between 1942 

and 1945, over 11,000 Japanese Americans 

were incarcerated at Topaz, which is 16 miles 

northwest of the town of Delta. Today, the Topaz Museum 

Board, led by President Jane Beckwith, owns 634 acres of 

the original 640 acres of the camp, which is open for 

self-guided tours and, upon appointment, guided tours. 

A former schoolteacher, Beckwith began amassing objects 

from Topaz as she incorporated the site’s history into her 

curriculum. “I soon had a trunkful of artifacts. That’s when 

I realized this was a huge story that deserved a museum,” 

says Beckwith. 

Designed by Sparano & Mooney Architecture, the Topaz 

Museum and Education Center won a Utah design award 

for architectural excellence. The 8,254-square-foot modern 

building was designed to reflect some elements of the Topaz 

incarceration site. For example, the museum’s honed 

concrete masonry exterior references Topaz’s grid layout, 

while other design elements represent the camp’s austere 

buildings with black tarpaper covering pine boards on the 

exterior and un-taped square-edge sheetrock on the interior 

walls. The museum includes a research library, bookstore, 

art gallery, exhibition space, administrative offices, and a 

curatorial and storage area for the more than 1,000 artifacts 

in the museum’s collection. This state-of-the-art facility 

provides a much-needed museum and education space 

where the histories and experiences of those incarcerated at 

Topaz can be shared with the public. 

In 2014, the Topaz Museum Board received a JACS grant 

to create permanent exhibits for the museum, which are 

scheduled to be completed in 2016.

Topaz Museum Board Constructs Museum and Education Center to Share 

History of World War II Incarceration 

The Topaz Museum, located near Delta, Utah, was constructed with assistance from a 2012 

JACS grant. A 2014 JACS grant will help create the exhibits within the museum building. 

Photo courtesy: photo by Brian Buroker, courtesy of the Topaz Museum

Visitors tour the Topaz Museum and art exhibit as part of the 2015 Day of 

Remembrance events held in Delta. Photo courtesy: Topaz Museum, photo 

by Rick Okabe 

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
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University of Arkansas at Little Rock Restores Monuments at the Rohwer 

Cemetery

“May the people of Arkansas keep in beauty and reverence forever 

this ground where our bodies sleep” reads the Monument to 

the Rohwer Deceased, designed and constructed by Rohwer 

incarceree Koheiji Horizawa during World War II. The haunting 

inscription served as a clarion call to protect and maintain the 

final resting place of 24 individuals incarcerated in the Rohwer 

Relocation Center. The cemetery, constructed by incarcerees 

after the camp opened, is one of few physical remnants of the 

confinement site that operated in Desha County, Arkansas. Led by 

former McGehee mayor Rosalie Santine Gould, residents in towns 

nearby and across the state protected and maintained the cemetery, 

which was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1992. Yet 

six decades of weather and vandalism deteriorated the monuments 

and headstones. 

During her first visit to the cemetery, Johanna Miller Lewis, 

Associate Dean and Professor of History at the University of 

Arkansas at Little Rock (UALR), was also moved by the obelisk’s 

inscription. She later told AY Magazine, “I made a promise to 

myself that day to restore the cemetery and honor the wish the 

Japanese Americans carved on the monument.” 

A 2011 NPS JACS grant award of $250,000 allowed UALR, in 

partnership with Witsell, Evans, and Rasco (WER) Architects 

and Kinco Constructors, to restore the two monuments in the 

Rohwer cemetery and begin improvements to drainage systems 

and walkways at the site. Among the many repairs and stabilization 

work, Kinco Constructors recreated and installed the original 

spires, finials, and urns that originally surrounded the base of the 

obelisk–a dramatic improvement to the historic monument. 

This project team also restored the Monument to the 100th 

Battalion (of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team), a concrete 

tank also designed by Horizawa, which commemorates Japanese 

Americans incarcerated in Rohwer who served in World War II. 

Kinco’s conservationists stabilized the monument, patched cracks, 

removed a tree that was weakening the monument, and poured a 

new concrete platform that matched the historic materials. 

Through the grant, UALR also created a website at http://

ualrexhibits.org/rohwer/, that includes the history of the 

cemetery’s headstones and monuments, current and historic 

images, and links to archival collections connected to both 

the Rohwer and Jerome camps. The preservation of the two 

monuments and drainage improvements completed Phase I of a 

comprehensive restoration project. Phase II, also funded by a JACS 

grant, involves the restoration of the 24 concrete grave markers, 

original concrete pathways, and the historic landscape. 

Restoration efforts underway at the Rohwer cemetery. Photo 

courtesy: Kinco Constructors

Fine craftsmanship helped restore the memorials to their original 

condition. Photo courtesy: Ken West Photography 
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

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University of Hawai‘i Center for Oral History Collects Unspoken Memories 

of Jerome 

“While we dearly love this country, we realize 

that it does have many faults,” declared Hawai‘i 

native Betty Kagawa during her valedictorian 

address. The year was 1944 and the place was 

Denson High School, Jerome Relocation Center, 

Arkansas. “[T]here are existing conditions that 

must be improved,” she continued, “one of these 

deplorable conditions being racial prejudice.” Just 

two years prior, the U.S. government removed 

about 1,200 Hawai‘i Issei, Nisei, and Kibei men 

from the islands, including Kagawa’s father, 

and detained them on the U.S. mainland. In 

a new project titled, “Unspoken Memories: 

Oral Histories of Hawai‘i Internees at Jerome, 

Arkansas,” the University of Hawai‘i, Center for 

Oral History (COH), under the direction of Dr. Warren Nishimoto, 

used a 2010 NPS JACS grant of $29,080 to collect oral histories 

from individuals who, like Kagawa, left their homes in Hawai‘i 

to join their fathers behind barbed wire. Through documentary 

research and community contacts, COH located 15 individuals 

who went to Jerome, which held about 250 Hawai‘i Japanese 

Americans, mostly children under the age of nineteen. 

The 15 participants ranged in age from 72 to 88. Interviewee Doris 

Taketa Kimura lived with her family on Maui when the FBI woke 

them to arrest her father, Torao Taketa. When asked if leaving 

Hawai‘i was a choice, Kimura replied, “Choice? Well...how else 

would we survive otherwise?” With their father gone, her family 

had no means of support. These memories and others are now 

audio-recorded and housed at Hamilton Library at the University 

of Hawai‘i. The project team also transcribed the interviews and 

placed them online at: http://scholarspace.manoa.hawaii.edu/

handle/10125/33173.

“One of the chief advantages of a true democratic state is that each 

one of us as its citizens can play a part in bringing about changes 

for the better...,” continued Kagawa from her high school podium 

in 1944. These interviews will educate students, researchers, 

and the general public about the unjust wartime incarceration of 

Japanese Americans—an important part in bringing about changes 

for the better. 

Betty Kagawa and her sisters May and June resettled in Des 

Moines, Iowa to pursue their studies after leaving the Jerome 

incarceration site in Arkansas. Photo by Hikaru Iwasaki, c. 

1944. Photo courtesy: The Bancroft Library, University of 

California Berkeley

Transcribed interviews are accessible on the University’s website. 

Photo courtesy: University of Hawai‘i, Center for Oral History 
National Park Service

32

Motorists along Highway 12 between Lewiston, Idaho and 

Missoula, Montana may reflect upon the area’s beautiful 

scenery, especially as the road crosses over Lolo Pass, but 

most probably have no idea that the highway was built 

by Japanese Americans, Japanese Latin Americans, and 

Japanese Mexicans who were interned in Idaho during 

World War II. Detained at Kooskia Internment Camp, run 

by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), these 

men unknowingly left behind traces of their lives—buttons, 

dental tools, gambling pieces, a porcelain vase, and works 

of art at the now abandoned site, hidden within Clearwater 

National Forest. With assistance from a 2012 NPS JACS 

grant of $24,132, the University of Idaho surveyed the 

lesser-known internment site, continuing the archeological 

field work and artifact analysis begun during a 2010 

archeological field school, which was also supported, in 

part, by a JACS grant.

To organize the dig, University of Idaho anthropology 

professor, Dr. Stacey Camp, coordinated a 2013 

archeological field school at the former internment site. 

With the grant, the University hired field school staff, fed, 

housed, and transported staff and participants, and mapped 

features. During the field school, students concentrated on 

a trash site, or midden. In addition to the surface survey, 

the excavation of two 1×1 meter units may have revealed the 

location of the camp’s canteen. Students then analyzed the 

artifacts they found to learn about the internees’ lives. For 

instance, a carved stone figure, possibly an otter, suggests 

the men did not simply “make do,” but rather found creative 

ways to pass the time.

Field school participants shared their findings during a 

Public Archeology Day, and graduate and undergraduate 

students shared their research on Kooskia at academic 

conferences. “Most people in Idaho know about Minidoka, 

but not about Kooskia,” Laura Ng, the project’s Assistant 

Director, told the Lewiston Tribune. “It’s unique. It’s 

hidden. It’s a hidden history.” The archeological project 

continues to put this lesser known internment site back on 

the map of Idaho—and American—history.

University of Idaho Completes Archeological Survey and Artifact Analysis 

at Kooskia Internment Site

Three men from Kooskia Internment Camp using jackhammer and other 

construction equipment. Photo courtesy: Kooskia Internment Camp 

Scrapbook (PG 103), University of Idaho Library Special Collections and 

Archives

Field school students at the Kooskia site. Photo courtesy: 

University of Idaho, photo by Dr. Stacey Camp
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

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In 2010, Washington State University (WSU) received 

a remarkable collection of photographs —those taken 

at the Heart Mountain, Wyoming incarceration site 

between 1943 and 1945 by a father and son, George 

and Frank C. Hirahara from Yakima, Washington. 

With a 2011 NPS JACS grant of $49,217, WSU cleaned 

and safely re-housed the collection’s over 2,000 

photographs and negatives. WSU digitized over 1,000 

of the images, made them the focus of an online exhibit 

about the Japanese American incarceration, and used 

the collection’s primary sources to craft undergraduate 

curriculum materials. The finding aid and digital 

collection are available at libraries.wsu.edu/hirahara; and 

the online exhibit at http://digitalexhibits.wsulibs.wsu.

edu/exhibits/show/jaincarceration/jaincarcerationintro.

Patti Hirahara of Anaheim, California, daughter of 

Frank C. Hirahara, donated the collection, which she 

found while helping her grandparents move out of their 

house in Yakima, Washington and at her parent’s house 

in Anaheim. Her grandfather, George Hirahara, “felt 

someday these photos will be able to tell the story,” she 

said, “by showing what actually happened behind barbed 

wire over 73 years ago.” When the ban on cameras 

in the camps was lifted in 1943, Japanese American 

photographers ordered equipment and built darkrooms 

beneath the barracks. Indeed, the Hirahara collection 

shows life at Heart Mountain through the incarceree lens.

The more than 410 news stories about the Hirahara 

collection prompted others to also donate their 

Heart Mountain photographs and artifacts to WSU. 

At the same time, research requests poured in from 

scholars, documentary filmmakers, and descendants of 

incarcerees looking for information and photographs of 

their relatives.

With a second NPS JACS grant of $77,769 awarded 

in 2012, WSU enhanced access to its Heart Mountain 

resources. WSU digitized, partially translated, indexed, 

and made searchable the photos, yearbooks, directories, 

and other ephemera from five of its Heart Mountain 

collections: Tom Hide Collection, Hirahara Collection, 

Kenneth Nishiyori Collection, Okubara Family 

Collection, and Takeda Family Collection. WSU also 

transcribed about 200 hours of interviews from the 

Frank Chin Collection, in which Japanese Americans 

shared their experiences during World War II, including 

the effects of the loyalty questionnaire. WSU then 

collaborated with the non-profit Densho to link and 

Washington State University Preserves the Hirahara Photograph Collection and 

Enhances Access to Heart Mountain Archives 

An unidentified man stands in lower Block 15. Taken by Heart Mountain High 

School senior Frank C. Hirahara in 1944. Photo courtesy: George and Frank C. 

Hirahara Collection, WSU Libraries, MASC

The Emmy Award winning documentary “The Legacy of Heart Mountain” was 

inspired by the Hirahara photo collection. Pictured are (L-R) film co-producer 

Jeff MacIntyre, Sam Higuchi, Jr., co-producer and KABC-TV news anchor David 

Ono, donor Patti Hirahara, Dr. La Verne Abe Harris, and Trevor James Bond, 

head of the WSU Libraries Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, 

during the first WSU all campus semester highlight in 2014. Photo courtesy: 

WSU Libraries MASC

maximize the two institutions’ online resources. In 2013, WSU 

partnered again with Densho to hold a workshop for WSU 

faculty and local secondary teachers on using primary sources 

related to Japanese American incarceration. These sources—

photographs, oral histories, and other documents in WSU’s 

collections—ensure the story of wartime incarceration is told 

by the people who experienced it and has made WSU a key 

resource in this area in the United States. 
National Park Service

34

Wing Luke Museum Preserves Stories, Collections of World War II 

Veterans and Incarcerees

Visitors peruse the exhibition on opening day at the Nisei Veterans Committee 

Memorial Hall. Photo courtesy: The Wing Luke Museum 

When Ken Mochizuki, noted author working with the 

Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American 

Experience, was writing the text for a new permanent 

exhibit honoring the men who served in the 442nd 

Regimental Combat Team, he listened intently as veterans 

like Frank Nishimura recounted the horrors of war.

“I used to carry two bazookas because they were too 

heavy for the bazooka man,” recounted Nishimura, who 

served with Company B, 100th Infantry. Nishimura 

said he watched as the “bazooka man,” whose identity 

is not known, inched to within 50 feet of an enemy tank 

and knocked it out, knowing that the recoil from the 

bazooka blast would result in his own death. 

 

That story, Mochizuki said, “tells everything about 

the courage, the camaraderie, and the sacrifice of the 

soldiers of the 442nd and other units,” including the 

Military Intelligence Service. As Mochizuki sat down to 

write the new exhibit, Voices of the Nisei Veterans, now 

on permanent display at the Nisei Veterans Committee 

Memorial Hall in Seattle, the story of the heroic 

“bazooka man” was among the many included. 

The permanent exhibit, which includes oral history 

testimonies as well as rare artifacts, photographs, and 

documents, debuted on May 4, 2014, along with the 

traveling exhibit, Nisei Veteran: Common Story, Common 

Bond, which tells the story of two brothers – Tadashi, 

who became a member of the Military Intelligence 

Service, and Masayuki, who joined the 442nd 

Regimental Combat Team. 

Both exhibitions were made possible with the help of 

a 2012 NPS JACS grant of $170,833 to the Wing Luke 

Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, 

working in partnership with the Nisei Veterans 

Committee (NVC) and the NVC Foundation. The grant 

also funded a training manual for volunteer docents, as 

well as the preservation and digitization of more than 

nine hundred documents and photographs and oral 

history videos of 12 veterans, which can be found at 

www.wingluke.org/voices-nisei-veterans. To view NVC 

materials on Wing Luke’s searchable online catalog, go 

to http://db.wingluke.org and search “Nisei Veterans 

Committee.”

A storyboard in the Nisei Veterans Committee Memorial Hall includes a 

map showing locations of Japanese American internment during World 

War II. Photo courtesy: The Wing Luke Museum 
35

Status of Funding for the Fiscal 

Year 2016 Japanese American 

Confinement Sites Grant Cycle

As a Federal agency, the NPS fiscal year begins 

on October 1 and ends on September 30 each 

year. On December 18, 2015, Congress passed the 

Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016 (Public 

Law No: 114-113); the government’s formal 

operating budget. The Act provides $2,995,000 

in funding for the Fiscal Year 2016 JACS Japanese 

American Confinement Sites Grant Program. 

In order to ensure that the NPS can successfully 

award JACS grants in 2016, the NPS announced 

the availability of applications on September 

10, 2015. The deadline for applications was 

November 10, 2015. 

It is anticipated that grant awards will be 

announced in late Spring 2016. As we receive 

updated information about the grant awards, we 

will post it on the JACS Grant Program website: 

www.nps.gov/JACS. The Uprooted traveling exhibit, funded in part by a Japanese 

American Confinement Sites grant, captures the stories of Japanese 

Americans photographed by Russell Lee as they worked and lived 

in farm labor camps across the western United States during WWII. 

Image Courtesy: Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission 

A carving of twelve barracks, with Heart Mountain in the 

background, made by Hikotaro Ujito while incarcerated at Heart 

Mountain Relocation Center. Image courtesy: The National 

Japanese American Historical Society, Inc. 

May Uchiyama at the Nyssa camp in Oregon. Image courtesy: Library 

of Congress (LC-USF34-073699-E), photo by Russell Lee, Farm Security 

Administration

Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites
National Park Service

36

CONTACT INFORMATION

Please contact one of the NPS regional representatives 

if you have any questions about the Japanese American 

Confinement Sites Grant Program.

INTERMOUNTAIN REGION

AZ, CO, MT, NM, OK, TX, UT, WY

Contact: Kara Miyagishima, Program Manager

 Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program 

Phone: 303-969-2885

Email: kara_miyagishima@nps.gov

Contact: Alex Hernandez, Assistant Program Manager

 and Historian

Phone: 303-969-2846

Email: alexandra_hernandez@nps.gov

MIDWEST REGION

AR, IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, NE,

ND, OH, SD, WI

Contact: Rachel Franklin-Weekley, Historian

 Midwest Regional Office, Division of Cultural Resources

Phone: 402-661-1928

Email: rachel_franklin-weekley@nps.gov

PACIFIC WEST REGION

CA, ID, NV, OR, WA, and other states not listed

Contact: Tom Leatherman, Superintendent

Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front 

 National Historical Park

Phone: 925-838-0249 ext. 6301

Email: tom_leatherman@nps.gov

Hawaii

Contact: Jacqueline Ashwell, Superintendent

 WW II Valor in the Pacific and Honouliuli National 

 Monuments

Phone: 808-725-6146

Email: jacqueline_ashwell@nps.gov

All correspondence and comments may be sent 

to the address listed below:

National Park Service

Intermountain Region

Japanese American Confinement Sites 

 Grant Program

ATTN: Kara Miyagishima

12795 W. Alameda Parkway

Lakewood, CO 80228

Please visit the NPS Japanese American 

Confinement Sites Grant Program for more 

information, including a list of eligible sites 

and projects, grant program guidelines, funded 

projects, and past newsletters:

Website: http://www.nps.gov/JACS

“Like” us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/

jacsgrant

Thank you for your interest in the Japanese 

American Confinement Sites Grant Program.

The National Park Service cares for 

special places saved by the

American people so that all may 

experience our heritage.

Layout/design by Miranda Samon

Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program

 Intermountain Region 

Spring 2016
Public Law 109-441 - Preservation of Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites

37

Nisei WACs (Women’s Army Corps) gather for a group picture. Photo courtesy: The Wing Luke Museum