The bombing of Pearl Harbor may be a day
of infamy for a generation of Americans,
but for Japanese Americans of that era,
there's another day that
shoulders just as much shame.
On February 19th, 1942,
ten weeks after that attack,
President Franklin Roosevelt showed
the status of our anti Asian sentiment
by signing executive Order 9066.
That order authorized the military
to round up Japanese Americans
living along the West Coast,
remove them from their homes,
forced them to abandon their businesses,
and leave behind everything.
But what they could carry a
brutality based on their ethnicity.
The justification for the incarceration
orders was that Japanese Americans
were committing acts of espionage.
The truth of the matter is,
is that the military,
through through the help of the
Federal Communications Commission.
Realized pretty quickly that
none of that was true. Still
beginning that March,
the War Relocation Authority would
send more than 120,000 people
to 10 remote camps scattered
from California to Arkansas,
including two one here in Idaho.
On August 10th, 1942, the Minidoka
Internment Camp opened unfinished.
Today, the story of the camp shares
the same status as the impacts of
that prejudicial imprisonment are
still being felt generations later.
The Minidoka Internment Camp opened
80 years ago today, and as you heard, a
lot of it was unfinished when thousands
of Japanese Americans arrived.
With most of them coming from the lush
coastal areas around the northwest,
you can imagine the shock
of showing up to this dry,
dusty destination in Jerome County,
Idaho and told this is where they would
live for the duration of the war.
Not only that,
they had to help finish and build their
own confinement finish the barracks.
The other buildings figure
out how to grow food.
80 years later,
most of the 13,000 Japanese Americans who
spent time there are no longer with us,
but their stories are being kept alive
through the Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee.
A group who tries to make regular
trips to what is now a National
Historic site in Hunt Idaho,
operated by the National Park Service.
Well,
that group made another trip this
summer and we were fortunate enough
to tag along to try to grasp the full
magnitude of this day in Idaho history.
It's the first site you
see at the West entrance,
much like those who arrived 80
years ago to what was then called
the Minidoka Relocation Center.
The guard tower, one of eight that
once watched over the property.
Then the lava rock guardhouse
kind of bar. That would have been here,
right? And a gate which controlled
who came in. And the second point and
who came out?
And keeping them in the barbed wire,
wrapping the perimeter.
A fence which wouldn't be in place
until months after people moved in.
You can see why relocation center
would be renamed and better
known as Incarceration Camp.
So if you want to come a little bit closer,
I wanna be welcome everybody here to
Minidoka National Historic site. Kurt
Ikeda is the director of Interpretation
and Education at Minidoka 120,000 people
of Japanese ancestry were
incarcerated during World War Two.
Kurt's job is to explain
how Japanese Americans
over 13,000 who were incarcerated
here at Minidoka during the
three years of operation.
Forced to live here, the majority
being from the Pacific Northwest,
Seattle lights, Portlanders,
135 folks from Alaska
transformed 33,000 dusty.
Isolate high desert acres
into fertile farmland with
more than 640 buildings packed
40 feet in between these barracks,
40 feet 40 feet 40 feet
a self sustained city. Sort of
the water systems were not ready until
October here two months after construction
that in 1943 would have been
Idaho's 7th largest. Today
we have block 19 right over here on this
map showing you kind of how far Madoka was
the National Historic Site
is reduced to just 73 acres.
The only 6 original buildings
to my right hand side the root
cellar, which will walk to,
along with divulging dramatic numbers
a 20 by 120 size bear could have been
where our families were incarcerated. Kurt
likes to ask how many of his
visitors are here for the first time,
he said. Block 42 could ask
you why that specific block.
Oh, that's where my family was.
This group, though they've been here before
this would be Barack one.
Right here. That was my home.
Yeah yeah barrack one way over here.
You're absolutely right. Yeah
Eugene Tagawa arrived in 1942 with
his parents and two older sisters.
I was born in June of that year so I was.
You know, like 3 months old, when I came
here my younger brother was born here.
Eugene was too young to remember
much about his time at camp and
we'll go into enter the barracks,
but that's why he keeps coming back.
Oh absolutely, every time is a new
experience because the people are different.
Since 2009, Eugene has been part of
the Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee.
Those a group formed nearly 20 years ago
to bring together family and friends of
former Incarceree back to these barracks.
I encourage you to find a place in
the wall that feels appropriate
to kind of lay your hand on and
pre pandemic. These pilgrimages
would boast more than 300 plus
people to feel history to not only
see the conditions they faced,
there was a single light bulb.
A potbelly stove.
Army cots with wool blankets.
And as you all know,
the phrase only we could carry.
But to honor that generation, is
there a certain kind of phrase, a feeling
that you get stemming aside here today
who had their rights and livelihoods
more than just relocated family?
Connection. Healing.
I could feel that I could feel that in
your voice I could feel that in this space
Eugene has been back about a dozen times
and it's all still as fresh as the first.
The first time I came on the pilgrimage,
I met this man that I'd known
in when I was in junior high
school as a as a church leader,
and he looked at my name tag and he said,
he said, oh, I know this name and I said,
yeah Howard, I was.
I went to a faith Bible church
when I was in junior high school.
He said, no, I know your father.
He said I played baseball with your
father in camp and then he told
me some stories about my father.
That and I never knew I didn't know
my father played baseball in camp.
So that was my first pilgrimage
and I said whoa, what a gift.
Right, yeah?
So that kept kept coming back,
and why Eugene is so encouraged to
see the younger generations alongside,
well, the. The barracks are just
the most intimate spaces, right that
were in these concentration camps.
Erin Shigaki's family spent
nearly 3 1/2 years at Minidoka.
I guess I can just feel the energy and I.
Just think about my family and
the things that that they endured.
Her grandfather's bitterness led them
to being one of the last to leave. She
was just so angry the whole time and
he was one of those guys who was
like we leave when they kick us out.
It's that strength of character.
Aaron wanted to commemorate
when she joined the pilgrimage
committee almost 10 years ago.
You know, I also realized that I
didn't didn't know a thing. You know,
there was like a paragraph in my 8th
grade Washington state history book. We
think about Madoka. We think about dust.
We think about lack of privacy.
Uh, there's certainly a
lot to learn about Minidoka
lines, lines for everything,
but maybe there's a lot
more to learn from Minidoka
$0.45 per person per day in 1942,
was the amount of money spent per person.
I want them to learn the whole story
about how a whole community and people
were unconstitutionally unjustly
incarcerated because of their race.
And I want people to understand
that to a certain degree,
it's still happening now.
I don't think as a country
we fully grappled with it.
I I know as a community we we're
not done grappling with it when
these truths can really become
part of the American narrative,
we're gonna be better for it.
I really believe that, but.
We have to tell it all you know.
Telling it all includes what
they endeavored for distraction.
There was music and dancing
stage shows and swimming holes
and they played sports like golf
and basketball and of course
it was baseball.
One of the only pastimes out here.
One of the only distractions from.
Their reality, which was just
being out here in this desolate.
Place with nothing around them and
they were just able to forget their
situation just for a little bit.
Johnny Narita only knew about
Minidoka through family chatter
growing up. You always hear
about camp I guess at some point
my family like kind of gave me
the the rundown of what it was.
What happened like the gravity
of it all and it never really
sunk in until I came out here
in 2016. Johnny joined his
grandpa George Nakagawa.
Former player for the Hunt team for
the dedication of the baseball field.
This place has. A certain power to it's.
It's like a place of great trauma and pain,
and it's also a place of healing.
Part of that healing happened
right here on this field,
and so they honored my grandpa
and the other baseball players.
And we like played catch for a bit
and I think I ran around the bases.
Yeah, I'm never gonna forget that.
Yeah. George left his bowling
glove to the Minidoka Museum.
But when he died a year later,
he left something more for his grandson.
It's our legacy for,
for better or for worse, it's.
A part of American history in
our history that we can't erase.
And we shouldn't try to erase it
for the 13,000 people,
which is what the Minidoka Pilgrimage
Committee is really all about.
And this ball field was built as a
community effort. Madoka will always be.
A community centered historic site.
Most of the buildings may be gone or
coming apart, but to keep them from
fading from history or from memory
will be about keeping connected.
All of the raw egg. Oh yeah,
those who are already connected. We are here
together now and we get to
reclaim this story. We get to
reclaim this place and remember
it for what it is, which is
a terrible place
to keep the Minidoka. Story in clear focus.
It's about remembering
this, not forgetting and.
Just saying never again.
There's one other thing you will notice as
you enter the Minidoka historical site,
it's on the left. There's a 3 panel.
Wooden sign has an eagle attached to the top.
It's called simply the honor roll,
and it lists the names of the
young men and women from the camp
who served in the military,
while their families remained incarcerated.
Just think about that.
They weren't considered American
enough to stay in their homes.
But they were American enough to be
sent to the front lines of the war.
There are nearly 1000
names on that honor Roll,
418 when that sign was first put up
just after the camp was opened in 1943
and was in full view of the guards who
were watching over them at the gate.
Minidoka had the highest percentage of
prisoners serving in the military by the way,
and when the war was over and the
incarcerates were allowed to go
home if they had one left, well,
most of those 33,000 acres of the camp.
They were then offered to
returning veterans to farm.