A Legacy to Uphold: Raising Awareness of Japanese American Incarceration in the NPS and Beyond

Painting of Manzanar in snow, watercolor by Kango Takamura, who was incarcerated at Manzanar, 1944.

UC LA, Kango Takamura Collection

Tom Leatherman, Superintendent of Pearl Harbor National Memorial, has been awarded a 2022 regional Cultural Resource Award for establishing the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Working Group. Bringing together National Park Service (NPS) employees from all levels of the organization, the internal group provides leadership for sites associated with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. Each NPS incarceration site participates, along with employees from diverse disciplines, like cultural resources, planning, education, interpretation, and more. This broad knowledge base helps the group tackle cross-cutting issues and share lessons learned, with the ultimate goal of improving NPS stewardship of these historic sites.

During WWII, the United States government forcibly removed 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and incarcerated them, without trial, in some of the most desolate places in the country. In 1982, a congressional study found that the incarceration was due to “racial prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.” Today, many of those sites are preserved by the NPS so that future generations can learn from their stories.

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• Leatherman on the importance of this history

  
  

  Leatherman shares his feelings on the importance of spreading awareness of Japanese Incarceration during WWII.

  Date created:

  04/26/2023

  Audio Transcript

  I think it’s important for everyone to understand that this is part of our history. It didn’t happen to someone else. It happened to us as a country.

NPS Photo

During a recent interview, Leatherman sat down to share with us his motivations for founding the working group. A forthright and honest speaker, he is an unwavering advocate for telling the hard truth about American history. He got involved in this subject matter in 2005, when he became the superintendent of Manzanar National Historic Site. Almost two decades later, he has remained closely involved, in addition to his duties as superintendent at different parks throughout the years. In early 2022, Leatherman set out to write the charter for the JACS Working Group.

At its core, the charter prioritizes community building and a collegial sharing of knowledge, regardless of rank. This is similar to the way that Leatherman leads. A colleague of Leatherman's shared that “he has a unique ability to lead while shining a light on others. This type of horizontal leadership, as opposed to a hierarchy, invites the rest of the team to collaborate and contribute their expertise.” This structure is a testament to the group’s positive reputation as approachable subject matter experts, ready to give advice or provide resources to fellow NPS employees.

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• Leatherman on diversity in the NPS

  
  

  Leatherman shares his philosophy on mentoring young leaders in the working group.
  Audio Transcript

  I do think representation is important. Especially people who have a history and connection to these stories - for the healing and for the work that needs to be done to help educate people. But I can’t in the same way represent the people who were incarcerated.

Leatherman at a Manzanar Pilgrimage

NPS Photo

If Leatherman gets his way, though, the future leaders of this working group will not look like him or have his life experiences. He feels strongly that the future of the NPS lies in the hands of a younger, more diverse workforce and that it is the role of the agency’s current leaders to mentor and develop them. That sort of representation is also fundamental to healing the wounds of the past. Having working group members with personal ties to this history or other civil rights movements helps the NPS build strong relationships with stakeholders, opening the door for them to tell their stories.

While Leatherman is looking to pass on the mantel of leadership to the next generation of NPS leaders, he says that he will never stop being involved, even after he retires. Over the last seventeen years (2005-2022), Leatherman has attended Pilgrimages at all ten War Relocation Authority sites. On an annual basis, people who were incarcerated and their relatives meet up at a site to try and heal by talking about the trauma in their lives and keeping the lessons of this moment in history alive. One of those lessons is that our American civil liberties, regardless of race, are a fragile thing if they are not protected. Each American citizen has a role in holding the government accountable and ensuring that this does not happen again.

• Leatherman on community involvement

  
  

  Leatherman shares his views on a superintendent's responsibility to get in touch with a park's stakeholders and community members.
  Audio Transcript

  If you are a leader in a park, and you’re doing it right, you invest in learning and working with that community – whatever the community is, whatever the park is. When you invest in learning and getting to know the community around the Japanese American incarceration, you become part of that community at some level.

Forming the working group is just the start. “It feels great,” he said when asked to reflect on the progress the group has made, “but we can always improve.” Leatherman hopes to continue to increase awareness among NPS staff of the group and the resources they offer.

Tom Leatherman would like to recognize the help of Anna Tamura and Bernadette Johnson, who helped to formalize the Japanese American Confinement Sites Working Group and edit its charter.

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The Regional Awards for Cultural Resources have been announced each spring for 50 years, celebrating NPS employees in the Pacific West Region for their dedication to preserving cultural resources. All regional winners go on to compete at the national level for the NPS Director’s Awards for Natural and Cultural Resources. More information about this and past years’ winners can be found on the National Park Service Website.