News Release

Park to host talk and screen new film, Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp on February 18

Risa and Yasubei Hirano and their son George posed in front of an American flag. Risa is holding a photograph of her son Shigera in uniform. The Hiranos were held at the Colorado River camp.

National Archives, photographer unknown

News Release Date: January 28, 2020

Contact: Jessica Ferracane, 808-985-6018

Hawaii National Park, HAWAI‘I –Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park will host a special After Dark in the Park program on Japanese American internment during World War II at 7 p.m. on February 18. The new film, Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp will be shown. 

On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 which led to the exclusion and unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese American citizens and legal residents of Japanese ancestry living in the United States during World War II. Today, the National Park Service protects and collaboratively manages some of the former internment camps including Manzanar, Tule Lake, Minidoka, and Honouliuli. 

Join us to preview the newly released 30-minute film Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp which reveals how unconstitutional imprisonment not only turned lives upside down but continues to ripple through generations and serves as a warning today.

Most people are unaware that Kilauea Military Camp in Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park was also used as a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Following the movie, National Park Service Archeologist Dr. Jadelyn Moniz-Nakamura will discuss the experience and subsequent detention of Japanese Americans here following the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

For more information on Japanese American confinement during World War II, visit:https://www.nps.gov/subjects/internment/index.htm.

After Dark in the Park is one of many programs sponsored by the Friends of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. 

-NPS-