With the help of a 2015 JACS grant, the University of Colorado Denver’s Center of Preservation Research used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) scanning technology to document existing and reconstructed buildings at the Amache incarceration site in Prowers County, Colo. (Photo: Courtesy of Michael Nulty, University of Colorado Denver)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The National Park Service has awarded more than $1.5 million in Japanese American Confinement Sites grants, the federal agency announced on Aug. 21. The money will fund preservation, restoration and education projects related to the forced incarceration of Japanese Americans by the U.S. government during World War II.
These projects will help tell the story of the more than 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, who were wrongly imprisoned by the U.S. government following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“Using both traditional and innovative techniques, we are working with communities and partner organizations to preserve an important part of our nation’s history,” said NPS Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith. “More than 75 years later, new generations of Americans can use these resources to learn the struggles and perseverance of Japanese Americans incarcerated during WWII.”
Congress established the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program in 2006 and authorized a total of $38 million in funding for the preservation and interpretation of associated sites. The Aug. 21 announcement brings the current award total to more than $26 million.
The grants will fund projects that include:
The Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles will create an exhibit based on the diaries and letters of Stanley Hayami, who served in the U.S. Army’s 442nd Infantry RCT and was killed in action while his family remained incarcerated at Heart Mountain in Wyoming.
The University of Colorado Denver will digitally scan the landscape and building foundations at the former Amache incarceration site in Prowers County, Colo.
The Oregon Nikkei Endowment of Portland will catalog and post online more than 1,500 photos, paintings and artifacts from its collection to shed more light on the Minidoka incarceration site in Idaho.
The grants are awarded to projects linked to the 10 War Relocation Authority centers, which were established in 1942, and more than 40 additional confinement sites. Projects are chosen through a competitive process and applicants are required to match the grant award with $1 in nonfederal funds or “in-kind” contributions for every $2 received in federal money.
