"MIIN 4-12 018" by U.S. National Park Service , public domain
MinidokaBrochure |
Official Brochure of Minidoka National Historic Site (NHS) in Idaho and Washington. Published by the National Park Service (NPS).
Minidoka
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
National Historic Site
Jerome, Idaho
Residents of block 23 (Minidoka Interlude 1943)
Minidoka National Historic Site
As the 385th unit of the National Park System, Minidoka
was established in 2001 to commemorate the hardships
and sacrifices of Japanese Americans interned there
during World War II. Also known as ‘Hunt Camp’,
Minidoka Relocation Center was a 33,000-acre site
with over 600 buildings and a total population of about
13,000 internees from Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.
The Center was in operation from August 1942 until
October 1945.
Executive Order 9066
In the 1800s, many emigrants from Japan crossed
the Pacific Ocean to seek economic opportunity in
America. While some originally intended to return to
their birthplace, many eventually established families,
farms, businesses, and communities in the United
States. Although America became their new home,
the pioneers (Issei) and their American-born children
(Nisei) encountered various forms of racial prejudice
in the United States. Congress passed laws prohibiting
resident aliens from owning land or obtaining
citizenship. Quotas were set restriction the flow of new
arrivals. With the rise of militarism in Japan in the early
1900s, newspapers often fanned the flames of prejudice.
Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941
intensified hostility towards Japanese Americans.
Some newspaper columnists, politicians and military
personnel treated all people of Japanese ancestry as
potential spies and saboteurs. As wartime hysteria
mounted, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed
Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942.
Executive Order 9066 gave the Secretary of War and
the military commanders the power to exclude any
persons from designated areas in order to secure nation
defense objectives against sabotage and espionage.
Although the order could be applied to all people, the
focus was on the persons of Japanese, German, and
Italian decent. Due to public pressure the order was
mainly used to exclude persons of Japanese ancestry,
both American citizens and legal resident aliens, from
coastal areas including portions of Alaska, Washington
State, Oregon, southern Arizona, and all of California.
Japanese American Internment
Following the signing of Executive Order 9066, over
120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry (Nikkei) living on
the West Coast were forced to leave their homes, jobs,
and businesses behind and report to designated military
holding areas. This constituted the single largest forced
relocation in U.S. history.
Temporary assembly centers were located at fairgrounds,
racetracks, and other make-shift facilities. Some 7,100
future Minidoka residents were first incarcerated at
the Puyallup, Washington assembly center known as
‘Camp Harmony’. Despite its innocuous name, it was
no summer camp. Barbed wire fences surrounded
the camp, armed guards patrolled the grounds, and
movement between different areas of the camp was
strictly controlled.
It would be five months before the ten relocation centers
established by the Wartime Relocation Authority were
ready for occupation.
Living Conditions at Minidoka
Minidokas’s first internees arrived to find a camp still
under construction. There was no hot running water
and the sewage system had not been constructed. The
initial reaction to the stark landscape by many was one
of discouragement. Upon arriving, one internee wrote:
Scraps of lumber and sage brush were utilized to make
furniture. Coal from the stoves and water had to be
hand carried. When coal supplies ran low, sagebrush
was gathered and burned.
The hastily built barracks buildings were little more
than wooden frames covered with tarpaper. They had
no insulation. Temperatures during the winter of 1942
plunged to -21 degrees Fahrenheit. Over 100 tons of
coal a day was needed for heating the buildings in the
camp. Spring, with its ankle deep mud, was followed
by scorching heat with temperatures soaring to 104
degrees Fahrenheit and blinding dust storms. Two
accidental drowning in the nearby North Side canal
prompted internees to build a swimming hole to cope
with the oppressive heat.
“When we first arrived here we almost cried, and thought
that this is the land God had forgotten. The vast expanse
of nothing but sagebrush and dust, a landscape so alien to
our eyes, and a desolate, woebegone feeling of being so far
removed from home and fireside bogged us down mentally, as well as physically.”
-Emory Andrews Collection
The camp consisted of administration and warehouse
buildings, 36 residential blocks, schools, fire stations,
an assortment of shops and stores, a hospital, and
a cemetery. Each residential block included twelve
barracks-style buildings (each divided into six small
one-room apartments), a communal dining hall, a
laundry facility with communal showers and toilets,
and a recreation hall. Provisions within the barracks
consisted of Army issue cots and a pot-bellied stove.
Light was provided by a single hanging bulb.
Internee tending a garden
Many living in the rural communities outside the camp
thought the internees, with their running water, indoor
plumbing, and “free” supplies, were being “coddled”,
a view that still persists today. For those inside the
camp, torn from their homes, friends and livelihoods,
then confined within barbed wire fences and looking
out at armed guards, the perception was considerably
different.
Despite the harsh conditions at Minidoka, internees
were resourceful. They built baseball diamonds and
small parks with picnic areas. Their baseball team
was virtually unbeatable. Taiko drumming and other
musical groups were formed, and a newspaper was
published, the Minidoka Irrigator.
To create beauty in an otherwise dismal landscape,
paths were lined with decorative stones and traditional
Japanese gardens were planted. Some of these remnants
are still visible today, yet most traces of daily life at
Minidoka are now gone.
Building Minidoka
Wartime Efforts
The 442nd Regimental Combat Unit
The relocation centers were subject to the same
wartime rationing as the rest of the country. Materials
considered to be vital to the war effort were recycled.
Minidoka was nearly an entirely self-sustaining
community complete with vegetable gardens, hog
and chicken farms. Japanese Americans interned at
Minidoka were also an indispensable source of labor
for southern Idaho’s agricultural-based economy.
“The Hunt residents were credited with possibly saving
hundreds of thousands of dollars in crop losses in the
local sugar beet and potato crops as well as in canneries,
lumber mills, etc. in the region during the three years the
center existed.” -North Side News 8/5/82
By the time the center closed in 1945 internees had
cleared and cultivated 950 acres of inhospitable land
and constructed the ditches and canals need to irrigate
them.
A Question of Loyalty
Segregation in the camps was achieved by employing
what came to be known as the “loyalty questionnaire.”
The questionnaires were originally designed for
determining suitability for military service, however
two problematic questions emerged.
Question 27 asked all internees if they would be willing
to serve in the Armed Forces on combat duty “wherever
ordered.” Women and legal aliens who were not
allowed to serve in combat struggled with this question.
Question 28 asked internees to foreswear allegiance to
Japan. The Issei, forbidden to become US citizens, were
troubled by the implications of this question.
Those who answered “no” to both questions were
labeled the “No-No’s” and shipped to Tule Lake,
California, the camp for ‘dissenters’. Many at Tule Lake
who answered “yes” to both questions were shipped to
Minidoka, a camp for ‘loyal’ internees.
Internees serving in the military
442nd Color Guard, U.S. Government Archives
Despite their internment, most Japanese Americans
remained intensely loyal to the United States, and
many demonstrated their loyalty by volunteering for
military service. They were segregated into all Japanese
American combat and intelligence units commanded by
non-Japanese Americans. Of the ten relocation centers,
Minidoka had the highest number of volunteers, about
1,000 internees - nearly ten percent of the camp’s total
peak population.
The 442nd combat unit fought in France and Italy
alongside the 100th Infantry Battalion from Hawaii (also
composed of Japanese Americans) and was the most
highly decorated unit of its size in American military
history. During WWII, 73 solders from Minidoka died
while fighting for their country and two received the
Congressional Medal of Honor.
“You fought not only the enemy but you fought prejudice and you have won.” -President Truman addressing members of the
442nd at the White House in 1946
Camp Closing
During the years of incarceration the internees had
transformed many acres of high desert into viable
agricultural land. After the camp closed in October
1945, the land was subdivided into smaller farms and
auctioned to the highest bidders or given to WWII
veterans along with two barracks buildings and one
smaller building. The drawing was by lottery. Preference
was given to WWII veterans on both the lottery and sale
of the farms. Many of the buildings from the camp were
also disbursed to government agencies and nonprofit
organizations. Today, most of the former Relocation
Center remains privately owned farmland.
Could This Happen Again?
The incarceration of Japanese Americans during the
1940s has been described as one of the worst violations
of constitutional rights in American history and yet few
Americans raised their voices in protest of the removal
order. More than two-thirds of the internees were
American citizens by birth. The system of checks and
balances that was suppose to protect their rights and
freedoms had failed.
In 1988, the Civil Liberties Act acknowledged the
fundamental injustice of the evacuation, relocation,
and interment of citizens and permanent resident
aliens of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
A formal apology by the U.S. Government was made,
as well as restitution to those individuals who were
interned. Most importantly, the Act provides for a
public education fund to finance efforts to inform
the public about the interment so as to prevent the
recurrence of any similar event.
The Historic site preserves remnant features from the original
camp, such as the waiting room at the entrance station
-NPS photo
All photographs courtesy of Records of the War Relocation
Authority, Record Group 210; Nation Archives at College
Park, College Park, MD 20740 -unless otherwise labeled.
Directions
May We Also Suggest
Minidoka National Historic Site is located between
the towns of Twin Falls and Jerome, Idaho in south
central Idaho. The Historic Site is open to the public,
port-a-potty and parking are located at the west
entrance. Guided tours are by appointment only.
Websites: www.nps.gov/manz
To get to the Historic Site from the intersection of
Interstate 84 (I-84) and U.S. Highway 93 (US 93):
-Travel north on US 93 for 5 miles to the Eden exit.
-Travel east on Highway 25 for 9.5 miles to the Hunt
Rd. exit.
www.minidoka.org
www.historicaljeromecounty.com
Visit the Minidoka Relocation Center display a the
Jerome County Museum and the “restored” barracks
building at thee Idaho Farm and Ranch Museum
(IFARM).
Jerome County Historical Society and IFARM
220 N. Lincoln
-Travel east on Hunt Rd. for 2.2 miles to the small
parking area on you right.
Jerome, Idaho 83338
Map available at website or Visitor Center.
For More Information
(208) 324-5641
Superintendent/Minidoka National Historic Site
Preserving the Historic Site
P.O. Box 570
Collecting of artifacts, rocks, plants, animals, or any
other object within the Nation Historic Site is strictly
prohibited. Help preserve your park by taking only
memories and photographs. Report violations to the
National Park Service at (208) 837-4793.
Hagerman, Idaho 83332
(208) 837-4793
www.nps.gov/miin
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