tofuwatch.com

U.S. government gives $1 million to raise awareness of Japanese American internment

The National Park Service announced last week that former Japanese American internment sites will receive $960,000 to boost awareness of this chapter of World War II history, The Associated Press reported.

Reporter Mead Gruver explained that the money, which will consist of 19 grants going to various sites or groups, will support a museum at what was the Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Wyoming and oral history projects involving internees.

In California, Manzanar and Tule Lake internment camps will receive money as will sites in Hawaii, Texas, Utah and Idaho.

Citing national security and military necessity, the U.S. government sent approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans to the camps during World War II. It turned out to be a wholesale denial of civil rights.

Gruver quoted Denver-based Park Service historian Kara Miyagishima as saying:

Especially now, it’s really urgent that we document internees’ experiences – firsthand experiences, what it was like.

I can understand why Miyagishima said that: Many internees are getting older. They are passing away.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to interview Fumiko Hayashida, a Seattle resident who is in her 90s and a former internee.

If her name doesn’t ring a bell, her photograph might.

She’s the mother who a Seattle Post-Intelligencer photographer captured in an iconic image in March 1942.

The image is famous worldwide and has been shown at the Smithsonian Institution and published in numerous books.

My story about her can be found here. The look on her face captured what her daughter, who also is pictured, describes as: “She was nobody yet everybody.”

There is, of course, that age-old, hard-nose question of: So what?

Certainly, civil rights have long been a cornerstone of American-style, law-based democracy. Upholding rights, even in times of intense crisis, for innocent people is critical for any open society. 

Hayashida’s outlook also says something about the human spirit: She still considers the United States to be a great nation.

And the fact that the picture of her exists shows that journalists who are willing to cover news at any time – and almost anywhere it occurs - remain relevant.

Yes, technology is changing media in revolutionary ways. News budgets are tight. It’s great that more people are telling stories, shooting photographs and making videos. 

But there is a need - in terms of knowledge and history - for an impartial, trained observer to witness an event no matter the conditions.

To learn more about the internment, visit Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project. The Seattle-based group is one of the Park Service grant recipients. The group’s blog posting about the grant is here.

The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles has information about the internment, as does Seattle filmmaker Frank Abe.

I want to thank Stan Honda of AFP for sending this AP story out on a list serv. I don’t know Stan, but I’m glad he spread the news.

I might have missed it.