Minidoka War Relocation Center
| Minidoka National Historic Site | |||
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| Location: | Idaho , United States | ||
| Specialty: | Internment camp for Americans of Japanese descent during World War II | ||
| Next city: | Twin Falls | ||
| Surface: | 1.2 km² | ||
| Founding: | January 17, 2001 | ||
| Visitors: | not recorded | ||
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The Minidoka War Relocation Center was an internment camp in the south of the US state of Idaho , to which up to 7,318 people were deported during the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II between August 1942 and October 1945. The name Minidoka comes from the Dakota language and means "source". It was carried over to the camp by an irrigation project by the Bureau of Reclamation in southern Idaho in the early 20th century.
The former warehouse was dedicated as a federal memorial in January 2001 by President Bill Clinton and converted into the Minidoka National Historic Site by the United States Congress in May 2008 . In 2006 plans for the design of the facility were presented and funding was authorized. The National Park Service operates the memorial with a visitor center , two original barracks, ruins and an educational trail . The expansion of the facility continues.
The internment of Americans of Japanese descent
- → Main article : Internment of Japanese Americans
Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States' entry into World War II in December 1941, on the basis of widespread racial prejudice and the continuation of various discriminatory restrictions, not only Japanese nationals in the United States, but all American citizens of Japanese descent were a security risk classified ( Enemy Alien , "enemy alien"). On February 19, 1942 signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt , the Executive Order 9066, large on the basis of parts of the Pacific Rim have been declared a prohibited area. All residents of California , western Oregon and Washington , a small strip of southern Arizona, and Hawaii and Alaska with Japanese ancestors were sent to internment camps east of the Pacific region by the War Relocation Authority . A comparable authorization for the complete internment of residents of German and Italian descent on the east coast was only implemented after a case-by-case examination. The internees were held on Ellis Island , among other places .
In December 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in two rulings that internment was lawful in principle, but that internment of an American citizen of Japanese descent, whose loyalty is undisputed, was inadmissible under the habeas corpus principle. The federal government then announced that it wanted to end the internment by the end of 1945. The end of the Second World War came before that.
A total of 116,000 people were affected by the coercive measures against the Japanese population; until 1945 they lived in ten barracks settlements far away from larger towns and under guard by the US military. After the end of the war, they were reimbursed for some proven damage under tight conditions.
In the 1960s, under the impression of the civil rights movement, criticism of the measures began to be loud, and in the 1980s the discussion led to extensive scientific studies and a political debate. After a commission set up by the US Congress came to the conclusion that the measures could not be justified by military necessity and that the decision was rather shaped by "racial prejudice, war-related hysteria and failure of political leadership", the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 granted $ 20,000 in compensation to each survivor of forced relocation. In 1992, a change in the law made further funding available to meet the commitment and President George HW Bush made a formal apology.
Minidoka War Relocation Center
The War Relocation Authority was looking for locations for the camps that had to be away from the Pacific coast and larger population centers. The south of Idaho offered itself for one of the camps. The region lies in the plain of the Snake River . It is geologically shaped by volcanism . Climatically, it is a semi-desert , characterized by long, hard winters with five months of frost and dry, dusty summers. Around 15,000 years ago, the region was flooded when Lake Bonneville broke through , the volcanic subsoil was partially exposed and the current bed of the Snake River was created. Without artificial irrigation, the area is almost sterile and was therefore only visited sporadically by Indians . In historical times, the Northern Shoshone and Bannock peoples used the region. However, an archaeological investigation in 2001 did not find any artifacts on the floor of the former warehouse from the time before the irrigation canal was built. The natural vegetation is determined by the sagebrush and known as the mugwort steppe.
Location and facility
The so-called Minidoka War Relocation Center (" Minidoka War Relocation Center ") was located in Jerome County in the south of the state of Idaho. After the postal delivery district, it was also referred to as the " Hunt Relocation Center" because there is another place called Minidoka around 80 km east in Minidoka County of the same name . The land belonged to the federal government , was uninhabited and intended for an irrigation project.
The entire area of the camp was a little over 130 km² and lay east of the North Side Canal , an irrigation canal. Almost 4 km² served as an administrative and living area, which was secured with around 8 km of barbed wire fence and 8 watchtowers. However, the fence and towers mainly had a psychological effect, as the internees often had the opportunity to leave the fenced-in area to bathe in the canal in the summer, for example. In addition, there was only deserted steppe around 20 km around the camp. Most of the towers were unmanned and the guards were unarmed. In Minidoka there was no case of the use of military force against internees; in one of the nine other camps, one internee was shot dead at the fence. The Minidoka War Relocation Center opened on August 10, 1942 and disbanded on October 28, 1945.
The camp was designed for the standard capacity of the internment camps of a maximum of 10,000 people and consisted of 35 blocks with 12 barracks each. They were arched to the structure of the terrain and a bend in the canal and were built by a civilian construction company according to the standards for a military camp made of wood in frame construction and sealed with tar paper . 275 to 300 people lived in each block. There were six rooms per barrack in three sizes between 4.50 × 6 m and 6 × 7 m, which were occupied by families depending on the number of relatives or groups of individuals. The only facilities that were initially provided were a built-in cupboard, camp beds and a cannon oven . Each of the blocks had a dining room, a lounge and a building with shared sanitary facilities. When moving into the warehouse, the buildings and infrastructure were not yet completed and the construction work was often inadequate. The inmates had to do without toilets and sewage systems for the first few months. The offices of the administration, the apartments of the civilian members of the administration, warehouses and workshops, a hospital and the accommodations of the military police were housed in other buildings .
The internees
With up to 7,318 people, mostly from Oregon , Washington and Alaska , the Minidoka camp was never fully occupied. Many of the internees came from agriculture, especially in Washington many Japanese had grown vegetables. They first expanded the existing irrigation system and then grew vegetables and potatoes for their own consumption and kept pigs and chickens. There was a coal-fired electricity and thermal power station, hairdressers, butchers, cooks and all the other professions necessary for life in the camp. Workshops made chairs, tables and other pieces of furniture. A small textile factory was originally intended to work for external clients, but only served the needs of the camp itself. Some internees worked outside the camp for farmers. The working inmates were paid between $ 12 and $ 19 a month, well below their previous income.
In addition, the inmates built and operated several schools for the children under primitive conditions. Qualified teachers, textbooks and other equipment were hard to come by. Even so, the camp's four schools received state recognition, and the students' education and degrees were later credited. In the course of time the internees laid out gardens, recreational facilities and sports fields, they organized parties, scout groups and sporting competitions against teams outside the camp. There was a newspaper, the Minidoka Irrigator . The food in the camp corresponded to that of the general population of the United States, and the rations were identical. Despite the existing health care, dysentery broke out several times and a typhus epidemic.
The internment was not only a serious encroachment on inmates' freedom, it also had far-reaching cultural implications. Since communication with the Wartime Relocation Authority had to be in English, contrary to Japanese tradition, the influence in the families shifted from the elders, the immigrants of the first generation ( Issei ) , to their children of the second who were born in America and went to school there Generation (Nisei) who, unlike their parents, were US citizens. The primary school students, who often belonged to the third generation, were in school all day and were also cooked together, which further weakened family ties and traditional values. Only members of the second generation could be elected to the camp council with a board of directors and an arbitration tribunal out of distrust of the immigrants.
The inmates' attitudes towards their internment varied widely. Some of the inmates rebelled with protests and strikes, especially in the power station. The resistance was broken by the forced transfer of the spokesmen to other camps. Other parts of the Japanese population saw themselves as fully assimilated Americans. Army units were even recruited from their circles from 1943 onwards. About 1000 of the internees from the Minidoka Camp volunteered and fought in the Allied invasion of Italy . The 442nd Regimental Combat Team of the US Army consisted entirely of Japanese Americans, mostly internees from Minidoka, and became the most decorated regiment of World War II, with 20 Medal of Honor holders and seven Presidential Unit Citations . Other former internees went to the military intelligence service and worked in particular in radio reconnaissance . The self-government of the camp decided to honor the soldiers from Minidoka with a plaque called an Honor Roll , on which all members of the armed forces from among the internees were listed. Some of the inmates of Minidoka, after being checked for loyalty, were able to leave the camp and continue university studies or move to parts of the United States off the west coast.
Known internees in the Minidoka Camp:
- Samuel Shozo Komorita (1927–2006), American psychologist, conflict and negotiation researcher
- Gary Tanaka (* 1943), Japanese-American businessman, athlete and philanthropist
- Paul Chihara (* 1938), American composer and music professor
Dissolution of the camp
From March 1945 the guidelines were relaxed and more and more internees were allowed to return to the coastal zone. After the end of World War II, internment was formally lifted and inmates were offered a train ticket to their place of origin, travel expenses and $ 25. However, as a result of the internment, many inmates of the camp had not only lost their freedom, but also the motivation to be self-employed and no longer saw any prospects in their former home.
“For this Issei, the tragedy was not in the watchtowers or in the cardboard-walled barracks. She was losing her sense of independence. "
They initially stayed in the camp, where board and lodging were secured. It took until the end of October 1945 for all internees to leave Minidoka, sometimes under massive pressure. Most of them went to Portland and Seattle , where they were partially picked up by the community of former internees who had arrived a few months earlier.
The land of the former camp was turned over to federal agencies such as the Bureau of Reclamation and the Bureau of Land Management when it was closed. The latter made land available to farmers.
The memorial
Under President Clinton there were negotiations between the federal government and several states over the designation of new large-scale nature reserves and some federal memorials, which were no longer concluded during his tenure. Therefore, in January 2001, in his last days in office, Clinton resorted to the authority under the Antiquities Act of 1906 to unilaterally expel National Monuments as President . Minidoka Internment National Monument was one of the eight created areas.
At that time there were only a few ruins of buildings belonging to the administrative area and a small information board on the site. Plans for the expansion of the memorial have been in progress since 2002. In 2005 a study of the history and importance of the camp was completed, a management plan was drawn up by 2006 and funding was provided in December 2006. The concept envisages expanding the area, reconstructing a barracks block, the Honor Roll , and some other facilities, and building a visitor center and ancillary building in the former administrative area. Immediately outside the former living area, on an arch of the canal, a landscaped memorial for the Issei , the first-generation Japanese immigrants, is to be created. An architects' competition for the design of this separate site was held in the course of 2007 .
In May 2008, the United States Congress expanded the memorial by law to include the addition that had been planned in 2006 and rededicated the National Monument as a National Historic Site . In addition, he formally proposed the Nidoto Nai Yoni Memorial , a memorial also dedicated to the remembrance of the internment, only 3 hectares in size in Bainbridge Island, about 1000 km away in Washington state . The first internees to arrive in Minidoka came from there.
The memorial was mandated by law to convey four topics to the public:
- the story of the forced relocation of Japanese Americans to Minidoka and the other camps;
- the living conditions in the camps;
- the work of internees and
- the performance of former internees who enlisted in the military in the United States Armed Forces.
The expansion, authorized in May, was implemented in July 2008, preparatory work was carried out in the course of 2009 and around 20 barracks still in existence from the camp were examined, which are still used by farmers in the near and far area. In 2011 a dining barrack and a living barrack were transferred to the site.
In May 2017, a temporary visitor center opened in one of the historic barracks. The permanent visitor center with exhibition and educational program opened in early 2020 . Due to the harsh climatic conditions, the visitor center is closed in winter, but the memorial and the outdoor facilities are accessible.
Another exhibition with several originally preserved barracks is in the County Historical Museum in Jerome , about 25 km west of the former camp. Since 2003, former internees, their family members and interested parties have come together annually in the Minidoka Pilgrimage, known as a pilgrimage , at the former camp.
Two other former camps are designated as memorials: The Manzanar National Historic Site was established as a memorial in 1992 and is located in eastern California , near Lone Pine . The Tule Lake War Relocation Center in Northern California has been a memorial since 2008. Several other locations are National Historic Landmarks .
literature
- Amy Lowe Meger: Minidoka Internment National Monument - Historic Resource Study , Prepared for the National Park Service, 2005 (also online in full text: Historic Resource Study ; PDF; 15.1 MB).
- Jeffery F. Burton et al., Confinement and Ethnicity - Barbed wire divider , Publications in Anthropology 74, National Park Service, Washington DC, 1999 (also online in full: Confinement and Ethnicity )
- Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied , Washington DC, 1982, (also online: Personal Justice Denied )
Web links
- National Park Service: Minidoka National Historic Site (official site; English)
- Friends of Minidoka - Association of Former Internees and Family Members
- Minidoka Pilgrimage - information about the annual gathering at the former camp
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Korematsu v. United States "- 323 US 214 (1944)
- ^ "Ex parte Endo" - 323 US 283 (1944) , Meger: Historic Resource Study , page 144
- ^ Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied, Summary
- ↑ Western Regional Climate Center: Twin Falls KMVT, Idaho (109293)
- ↑ Meger: Historic Resource Study , page 5
- ↑ Burton, Chapter 9, page 2
- ↑ a b Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, Personal Justice Denied , Chapter 6
- ↑ Burton, Chapter 9, page 1
- ↑ Meger: Historic Resource Study , page 141
- ↑ Meger: Historic Resource Study , p. 123
- ↑ a b Burton, chapter 3, page 10
- ^ National Japanese American Historical Society: Research on 100th / 442nd Regimental Combat Team
- ↑ Craig D. Parks: Obituary - Samuel Komorita Remembered. In: Association for Psychological Science website. Association for Psychological Science, June 1, 2007, accessed December 11, 2018 .
- ^ Sociologist James Sakoda, quoted in Meger: Historic Resource Study , p. 146
- ^ National Park Service: Minidoka Internment National Monument - Plan Process
- ↑ Consolidated Natural Resources Act of 2008 (Sec 313), 122 STAT. 770, Public Law 110-229-MAY 8, 2008
- ↑ Conservation Fund : Minidoka National Historic Site Expands To Protect Original Location Of Japanese-American Internment Camp ( Memento of July 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), February 17, 2011
- ^ National Park Service: Minidoka National Historic Site - Basic Information
- ↑ National Park Service: Minidoka National Historic Site Visitor Center Grand Opening , January 30, 2020
- ↑ Meger: Historic Resource Study , p. 168
