Welcome to the Park of the Week Newsletter for September 5, 2024. This week we’re featuring a national historic site that once imprisoned 13,000 Japanese Americans.
Minidoka National Historic Site
Location
Idaho and Washington, United States
Claim to fame
In March of 1942, a few months after the Japanese military attacked the Unites States at Pearl Harbor, the US government issued an order that excluded all people of Japanese descent, including American citizens, from the West Coast. The Japanese Americans of Bainbridge Island in Washington State were the first community to be forcibly relocated. They were taken to a concentration camp in rural Idaho called Minidoka, where 13,000 Japanese Americans were interred for most of the war.
Reason to visit
Today, Minidoka is a national historic site that memorializes the unfair treatment of Japanese Americans and their internment during World War II. The park oversees historic buildings and a visitor center open seasonally in Minidoka as well as a memorial on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Visitors to Minidoka can watch the powerful park film and explore the site via a walking tour.
Wild Fact
During the American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, Japanese Americans began calling for reparations for the harm done to them by the US government. After years of activism, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 formalized an apology for the grievous damage done to Japanese Americans and offered limited financial reparations to survivors. Minidoka concentration camp and the Bainbridge Island Japanese Exclusion Memorial serve as reminders of the importance of protecting civil liberties and how easily these protections can be stripped away.
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