Please note: projects are listed by the states of the grant recipients.
Arkansas
Recipient: University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR)
Project Title: Rohwer Reconstructed II: Making Connections Through Time and Space
Grant Award: $254,606
Site(s): Jerome Relocation Center, Chicot and Drew counties, AR; Rohwer Relocation Center, Desha County, AR
Description: The University of Arkansas will add an estimated 1,300 items to its existing online database of Rohwer and Jerome materials, including photographs, correspondence, newspaper clippings, 2D and 3D images of objects, incarceree interviews from the 2004 film, Time of Fear, and biographies of incarcerees and camp administrative staff. A 3D visualization of Barracks Block 12, created with a 2013 Japanese American Confinement Sites grant, will be expanded to include the auditorium, library and athletic fields, with audio narratives integrated into the model.
Recipient: University of Central Arkansas (Conway, AR)
Project Title: A Season of Remembrance: Rohwer and Jerome at 70
Grant Award: $75,908
Site(s): Jerome Relocation Center, Chicot and Drew counties, AR; Rohwer Relocation Center, Desha County, AR
Description: The University of Central Arkansas will commemorate the 70-year anniversary of the closing of the Rohwer and Jerome incarceration sites through the production of “Remembrance,” an evening-length theatrical performance based on stories from the Japanese American World War II incarceration experience. “Remembrance” will be the centerpiece of “A Season of Remembrance: Rohwer and Jerome at 70,” a series of public events—lectures, readings, exhibitions, and workshops. The project also will include lectures and demonstration performances for high schools, and a video documenting the work’s creation and performance.
California
Recipient: California State University, Dominguez Hills (Carson, CA)
Project Title: California State University Japanese American Digitization Project
Grant Award: $321,554
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: California State University (CSU) will digitize nearly 10,000 documents and more than 100 oral histories related to the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II, and make those materials available on a CSU sponsored website. A consortium of 13 CSU archives will participate in the project, with each campus supervising the digitization and cataloging of its records. In addition, the project will result in a teaching guide and traveling exhibit for schools and the public. Participating CSU archives are: Dominguez Hills, Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Fresno, Fullerton, Northridge, Sacramento, San Jose, San Bernardino, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco, and Sonoma.
Recipient: Heyday (Berkeley, CA)
Project Title: “Journeys from Manzanar,” a Published Book Project
Grant Award: $100,000
Site(s): Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: Heyday, a non-profit publisher, will partner with the Manzanar History Association to co-publish a book that will provide an intimate glimpse into the lives of the children of Manzanar in the post-World War II years, when those children grew up, had children and grandchildren of their own, and the ways in which they left lasting imprints on the American landscape far beyond Manzanar. Drawing on 500 oral histories, the book’s essays will include overviews of resettlement out of Manzanar, challenges met and prejudices faced during the post-war years, the emergence of Asian American activism in the 1960s and 1970s, and federal redress and reparations in the 1980s and 1990s.
Recipient: National Japanese American Historical Society (San Francisco, CA)
Project Title: Camp Digital Archives
Grant Award: $83,875
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The National Japanese American Historical Society will digitize approximately 400 new entries from its collections and upload them to the Japanese American Confinement Sites database hosted on the University of San Francisco’s Gleeson Library Digital Collections website. The selections will comprise letters, photographs, oral history transcripts, and other personal documents, as well as official documents and manuscripts related to all ten War 3 Relocation Authority incarceration sites and some Department of Justice internment sites. Graduate student interns from the University of San Francisco’s Museum Studies program will research, catalog, photograph or scan the documents, as well as assist in making the information accessible on the website.
Recipient: The Regents of the University of California, c/o UC Berkeley Sponsored Projects Office (Berkeley, CA)
Project Title: Japanese American Internment Sites: A Digital Archive
Grant Award: $296,347
Site(s): Multiple Sites, including Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston), La Paz County, AZ; Tule Lake Segregation Center, Modoc County, CA; Gila River Relocation Center, Pinal County, AZ; Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, will establish a comprehensive virtual archive of its holdings of War Relocation Authority (WRA) records – the largest repository of those records outside of the National Archives. While the Bancroft Library holdings about Japanese Americans’ forced removal and incarceration during World War II are among its most heavily used materials, the documents are widely dispersed. This project will ease discovery and access by tying the WRA holdings to the existing finding aid and allowing users to access the records via a thematic website.
Recipient: San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center (Pacoima, CA)
Project Title: Only the Oaks Remain: The Tuna Canyon Detention Station Traveling Exhibit
Grant Award: $102,190
Site(s): Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Los Angeles County, CA
Description: The San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center will create a museum-quality traveling exhibit to tell the story of the former Tuna Canyon Detention Station in Tujunga, California. The exhibit will include the names of the more than 2,000 people of Japanese, Italian, German, and Japanese-Peruvian descent detained at Tuna Canyon, along with brief biographies of several detainees. The traveling exhibit also will include video interviews with detainees’ children, and a diorama and model of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, which was torn down in 1960.
Recipient: Special Service for Groups (Los Angeles, CA)
Project Title: A Flicker in Eternity Interactive Curriculum: Teaching Stories of Confinement
Grant Award: $20,000
Site(s): Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park County, WY; Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: Special Service for Groups will partner with Kizuna, a community-based non-profit organization, to create an interactive educational curriculum to teach over 300 elementary through college-aged students about the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Students will participate in out-of-classroom workshops that will utilize Sharon Yamato’s A Flicker in Eternity, a film that chronicles the life of a Japanese American teenager incarcerated at Heart Mountain, to engage students through hands-on learning activities and discussions. The curriculum and workshops will be implemented at former Japanese American incarceration sites, Japanese American community centers, and made available online.
Colorado
Recipient: University of Colorado, Denver (Denver, CO)
Project Title: Amache 3D Digital Documentation
Grant Award: $24,202
Site(s): Granada Relocation Center (Amache), Prowers County, CO
Description: The University of Colorado Denver’s Center for Preservation Research will use LiDAR scanning technology to produce a complete 3D digital model of the landscape, buildings, and site features at Amache as they appear today. In addition, the University will produce 3D images of four barracks buildings, which were relocated to an area about 50 miles south of Amache. The 3D digital scans, panoramas, and data produced through this grant will provide measurable geo-spatial data and a very high level of detail about the site, which will serve as a powerful tool to inform future research and preservation efforts.
District of Columbia
Recipient: National Trust for Historic Preservation (Washington, DC)
Project Title: Left Behind: Documenting the Japanese American Collections at Seattle’s Panama Hotel
Grant Award: $137,178
Site(s): Minidoka Relocation Center, Jerome County, ID
Description: The National Trust for Historic Preservation will inventory, catalog, and photograph personal belongings stored in the basement of the Panama Hotel by Japanese Americans who could only take what they could carry with them to the incarceration sites. Prior to World War II, the Panama Hotel in the heart of Seattle’s Japantown was a central gathering place for the Japanese immigrant 5 community. After the war, many Japanese Americans never returned to the hotel to retrieve their belongings. The National Trust will partner with the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience to evaluate the significance of these objects, develop a collections hierarchy to guide the next steps for their preservation and interpretation, and create a searchable database of these personal items.
Hawaii
Recipient: Friends of Waipahu Cultural Garden Park (aka Hawaii’s Plantation Village) (Waipahu, HI)
Project Title: Phase Two, Administration Building Construction Documents, Student Participation and Exhibit
Grant Award: $112,000
Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, HI
Description: Friends of Waipahu Cultural Garden Park (aka Hawaii’s Plantation Village) will complete construction documents and specifications for future restoration of an administration building, believed to be a guard house, at the Honouliuli Internment Site. The project builds on a 2009 Japanese American Confinement Sites grant for an Existing Conditions Report that documented the two remaining buildings at Honouliuli. Architects and engineers will now develop plans and cost estimates for restoring the guard house, and two students from the School of Architecture at the University of Hawaii will work as practicum participants on the project. A year-long museum exhibit focusing on restoration efforts and the history of Honouliuli also will be assembled at the Friends of Cultural Garden Park in Oahu.
Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI)
Project Title: Hawaii Japanese American Internment: Short Documentaries on the Hawaii Counties of Kauai, Oahu, Hawaii, and Maui
Grant Award: $215,502
Site(s): 17 internment sites on the islands of Hawaii, Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai
Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii will produce a four-part documentary sequel to The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, produced in 2012 through a Japanese American Confinement Sites grant. The sequel will comprise four, 15-minute films, focusing on 17 Japanese American internment sites dispersed throughout the islands of Hawaii, Kauai, Oahu, Maui, Molokai, and Lanai. A one-hour-long DVD of the films will be created and posted online, and 500 copies distributed to partnering organization and schools.
Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii (Honolulu, HI)
Project Title: The Power of Place: The Archaeology of Hawaii’s Internment Sites
Grant Award: $38,600
Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, HI; Haiku Camp, Maui County; Kalaheo Stockade, Kauai County; and other internment sites in Hawaii
Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii will produce a comprehensive report that synthesizes the existing archeological studies about Hawaii’s internment sites together with new field work to identify, record and map newly discovered sites and features. The manuscript will be illustrated with historic and current photographs and maps, photographs of artifacts and field investigations, and include an annotated list of useful archives and repositories, as well as Geographical Information System (GIS) data on Honouliuli.
New York
Recipient: Asian CineVision, Inc. (New York, NY)
Project Title: The Orange Story: A Cinematic Digital History Project
Grant Award: $159,548
Site(s): Multiple Sites, including Merced Assembly Center, Merced County, CA; Granada Relocation Center (Amache), Prowers County, CO
Description: Asian CineVision, Inc. will produce The Orange Story, a 15-minute film portraying an historical re-enactment of a day in the life of one Japanese American forced to move from his home and sell his business before being sent to an incarceration site during World War II. The film will be available on a website that also will include educators’ tools and resources, such as an interactive timeline, annotated historical photos, and critical essays related to the Japanese American World War II incarceration. The film will be presented to a wide range of audiences through public programming and other avenues, including film festivals and screenings at colleges and universities.
Recipient: WNET (New York, NY)
Project Title: Mission US: “Prisoner in My Homeland”
Grant Award: $400,000
Sites(s): Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County, WA; Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA; Minidoka Relocation Center, Jerome County, ID
Description: WNET, a public media station, will produce an online educational video game that places students in the role of a Japanese American teen-aged boy who must make choices as he and his family are forced to leave their home on Bainbridge Island, Washington, for one of the “temporary detention centers” and then to 7 one of ten WRA incarceration sites during World War II. The game, “Prisoner in My Homeland,” builds on WNET’s Mission US series, an award-winning group of online video games designed to increase young people’s understanding of U.S. history. “Prisoner in My Homeland” and accompanying classroom materials will be accessible for free through any web browser and designed so teachers can fit segments into a typical classroom period.
Texas
Recipient: Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc. (Austin, TX)
Project Title: Seagoville Internment Camp: Detainee Mural and “Japanese Colony” Study
Grant Award: $16,000
Site(s): Seagoville Internment Camp (INS Detention Station), Dallas County, TX
Description: The Friends of the Texas Historical Commission, Inc. will research and document a fading mural that was painted by an internee in the former Department of Justice Seagoville Enemy Alien Detention Station, an internment site used to detain Japanese, German, Italian, and others deemed “Enemy Aliens” during World War II. Art conservators will study the 70-year-old mural, and produce a report detailing the costs and potential for future restoration. Also, the history of the approximately 250 Japanese Latin Americans interned at Seagoville will be shared through interpretive banners displayed at the prison and the local public library, with additional information posted on the Texas Historical Commission website.
Washington
Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)
Project Title: Confinement Sites Encyclopedia Enhanced for Education
Grants Award: $236,777
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Densho will enhance its online encyclopedia with the goal of making it the “go to” resource for teachers and students studying the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II. Additions will include 350 new articles; a detailed tagging and categorization of 587 encyclopedia articles by subject, reading level, and other variables; a resource finder application that allows users to create lists of resources that match specific criteria; and approximately 100 digitized books, videos, and curricula. The encyclopedia already includes more 8 than 1,100 multimedia articles written by scholars and researchers of Japanese American history.
Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)
Project Title: Making Connections with the Japanese American Incarceration
Grant Award: $131,574
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Densho will partner with the Holocaust Center for Humanity, the Northwest African American Museum, and a local indigenous community organization to create an educational curriculum and teacher-training workshop that connects the Japanese American exclusion and incarceration story with other historical events of civil and human rights violations. Densho will host at least four professional development workshops to train approximately 100 teachers on how to implement this curriculum in their classrooms. The finalized curriculum will be published on Densho’s Learning Center website.
Wyoming
Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)
Project Title: Heart Mountain Root Cellar, Phase II: Emergency Stabilization
Grant Award: $90,500
Site(s): Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park County, WY
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will stabilize the severely deteriorating 35-foot by 312-foot root cellar originally used by incarcerees to store produce. This project builds on a 2013 Japanese American Confinement Sites grant that enabled the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation to acquire the root cellar, assess its condition, and begin interim stabilization. Phase II will complete the emergency stabilization and address issues noted in the condition assessment report, including water seepage, deterioration of the wood framing, weakening of the soil floors, broken vents, cracks in the sheathing and roof beams, and openings in the roof eaves caused by the washing away of sod and soil.
Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)
Project Title: Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium
Grant Award: $28,639
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, in partnership with the Japanese American National Museum, will convene two meetings to bring together a consortium of leaders representing confinement sites and key 9 organizations working to preserve the sites and history related to the Japanese American incarceration experience. The first meeting will take place during the 2015 pilgrimage at Heart Mountain; the second will be held in 2016 in Washington, D.C. The meetings will provide an opportunity for leaders and stakeholders, who often are widely dispersed, to strengthen their relationships and capacity by sharing information and resources to ensure that the sites are preserved and the lessons from this chapter in American history are not forgotten.
Last updated: March 25, 2022