Preserving the History of Japanese-American Internment Camps
Monday February 25, 2008
There's a great article in today's U.S. News & World Report about the U.S. Park Service's efforts to preserve the country's WWII Japanese-American Internment Camps. It's amazing how many Americans have no knowledge of this very dark time, when nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry, the vast majority of them American citizens born in the United States, were forced to leave their homes and relocate to 10 remote internment camps throughout the Western states in the interest of "national security." Hopefully Congress will find room in the budget to bring these internment camps and the stories of the internees themselves out of the shadows.
Related: WWII Internment Records
Related: WWII Internment Records
Comments
“Preserving The History of Japanese-American Internment Camps”-you stated “10 Remote Internment Camps Throughout the Western States”. Do you consider Arkansas a “Western” state, or did you omit on purpose the Japanese Internment Camp located here?
In regard to the question as to whether the two Wartime (1942-1945) Japanese American Internment Camps located in Arkansas were “considered Western Internment” Camps, yes, collectively, they were and have been described as such. But, in reality, Arkansas was and is considered an “upper southern” state–often considered the south. The camps were chosen by the War Relocation Authority with pressure from the institutional framework of the Federal government’s Farm Security Administration which had a significant presence in Arkansas during the Depression (1930s)era. It was headed, in Arkansas, by E.B. Whitaker who eventually became the head administrator in the construction and operation of the Arkansas Internment camps–one in Rohwer and the other in Jerome, Arkansas. In fact a functional administrative framework existed in Arkansas–based upon agricultural production–and the establishment of governmental farm communities at the onset of war with the empire of Japan. The WRA was convinced such camps built in Arkansas to intern the Japanese Americans could be used to “produce surplus crop to help the war effort.” This,however, was simply not the desired outcome.
Russell Bearden, Arkansas Historian of Japanese-American Internment.