National Park Service issues grants to preserve Japanese American internment camps

Monument to the Dead at Manzanar,  Calif., erected in 1943 by Japanese American internees.

GRANTS worth $2.8 million  from the National Park Service will go a long way to ensure that the lessons learned from the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II will never be forgotten. The National Park Service awarded a two-year $321,554 grant to CSU Dominguez Hills, which is serving as the principal investigator for the CSU Japanese American Digitization Project.  Archives at 15 California State Universities are collaborating to digitize nearly 10,000 documents and more than 100 oral histories related to the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II. The project will make these materials available on a CSU-sponsored website and also result in a teaching guide and traveling exhibit for schools and the public. The grant was one of 20 awarded by the National Park Service totaling more than $2.8 million to help preserve and interpret the World War II confinement sites of the 120,000 Japanese Americans, who were imprisoned by the U.S. government following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. “As stewards of our nation’s history, the National Park Service recognizes the importance of preserving these confinement sites,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis.  Many campuses throughout the CSU system were located near California’s internment camps and Japanese American communities. Throughout the last half century, their archives, libraries, oral history projects and history departments have collected archival and manuscript materials, objects, and media relating to Japanese internment that have yet to be digitized. With the grant money, participating CSU archives at Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento, San Jose, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, and Sonoma will digitize and catalog their records. The park service grant amounts range from $16,000 awarded to the Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc., 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. Grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program can go to the 10 War Relocation Authority centers established in 1942 or to more than 40 other confinement sites. The goal of the program is to teach present and future generations about the injustice of the World War II confinement history and inspire a commitment to equal justice under the law.  “They are poignant reminders – today and for future generations – that we must be always vigilant in upholding civil liberties for all," says Jarvis. "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.” ###