Salazar Announces a $290,000 Grant to Preserve and Interpret a World War II Japanese Internment Site in Arizona

March 22, 2012
Contacts: Adam Fetcher (DOI) 202-208-6416
David Barna (NPS) 202-208-6843

Salazar Announces a $290,000 Grant to Preserve and Interpret a World War II Japanese Internment Site in Arizona

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that the National Park Service is awarding a $290,000 grant to help preserve and interpret the Leupp Citizen Isolation Center in Arizona where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.

Developing Innovations in Navajo Education Inc. was awarded the grant to produce a full-length documentary film that explores the Leupp Citizen Isolation Center on the Navajo reservation at Leupp, Arizona.  The film will center on internee Taneyuki Dan Harada, who will talk about his experience through his paintings, which include revealing self-portraits and well-known works such as “Barracks: Topaz, Utah,” which he created in 1944 and which now hangs in the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. The Navajos own stories of confinement and loss of cultural traditions parallel those of Japanese Americans, and the film will include interviews with Navajo people about life at Leupp before, during, and after the existence of the Japanese American isolation center.

The project is part of a larger program of 17 grants across 11 states totaling nearly $2.9 million.  With this year’s grants, the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, now in its fourth year, has awarded nearly $9.7 million in funds since Congress established the $38 million program in 2006.

“If we are to tell the full story of America, we must ensure that we include difficult chapters such as the grave injustice of internment of Japanese Americans during World War II,” Secretary Salazar said. “The internment sites serve as poignant reminders for us - and for the generations to come - that we must always be vigilant in upholding civil liberties for all.”

The incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them American citizens, followed Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

“These places, where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were unjustly held, testify to the fragility of our constitutional rights in the face of fear and prejudice,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “The National Park Service is honored to help preserve these sites and tell their stories, and thus prevent our nation from forgetting or repeating a shameful episode in its past.”

Grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites program may go to the 10 War Relocation Authority camps established in 1942 or to more than 40 other sites, including assembly, relocation, and isolation centers. The program goal is to teach present and future generations about the injustice of the World War II confinement and inspire a commitment to equal justice under the law.

This year’s winners were chosen through a competitive process that requires applicants to match the grant award with $1 in non-federal funds or “in-kind” contributions for every $2 they receive in federal money.

For a complete national list of projects, click here: http://www.doi.gov/news/pressreleases/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=285398

For more details about these projects, visit:  http://www.nps.gov/hps/hpg/JACS/index.html

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