Bush To Preserve WWII Internment Camps

Law Will Turn Remains Of Japanese-American Detention Sites Into Historic, Research Centers

(CBS/AP)  President Bush signed into law a $38 million grant program to preserve notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II.

The money will be administered by the National Park Service to restore and pay for research at 10 camps. The law is intended to help preserve the camps as reminders of how the United States turned on some of its citizens in a time of fear.

The camps housed more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans — U.S. citizens and residents — under an executive order signed by President Roosevelt in 1942, when America was reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Dec. 7, 1941.

At the time there were fears that Japanese-Americans were loyal to Japan. Roosevelt's order prohibited them from living on the West Coast, in a position possibly to help an invasion force.

Thousands of families in California and parts of Washington state, Oregon and Arizona were pushed from their homes and into camps surrounded by armed guards. The sites named in the legislation are in California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho.

The last of the camps closed in 1946. President Bill Clinton called for the preservation of the camps in 2000 and signed a memorandum seeking recommendations on developing more opportunities for the public to learn about the internment.

The law signed by President Bush will give grants to nonfederal organizations for historical, research and restoration work at the sites named in the legislation, as well others selected by the head of the Interior Department, which includes the National Park Service.

The National Park Service already operates facilities at two of the 10 camps: the Manzanar National Historic Site in California and the Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho.

Co-sponsors of the bill included the two current members of Congress who spent time in the camps as children: Democratic Reps. Mike Honda and Doris Matsui of California. Matsui was born in the Poston camp in Arizona.

Two camps in southeastern Arkansas — the Jerome Relocation Center and the Rohwer Relocation Center — held 16,000 detainees between 1942 and 1945.

At its peak the camp at Jerome had 610 buildings on its 500 acres. Not much of the original camp survives. A water-treatment reservoir and a smokestack from the camp hospital are the only structures left.

The Rohwer camp, once 500 acres, includes the graves of 24 who died at the camp and several memorials.

President Reagan signed a presidential apology to Japanese-Americans in 1988.

[grazinggoat]

Hope Gitmo's not gonna be erased. It is the shame of America featuring the Walking-Liar Bush, wax-face Cheney's legacy of Human Rights Violations.

[ronaldstark]

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[ronaldstark]

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[sharncedar]

What is Bush trying to say, that Gitmo is OK because in the last great struggle against fascism, WWII, they also had camps?

Now we are in the next defining, all-out struggle against fascism, this time its fascism of little ballerinas who live inside cereal boxes, I believe, or something like that, anyway its some people we can't see without drinking special liquids and instead of 10,000 panzers they have, let's see, no tanks at all.

But Bush has shown us again his trememdous understanding of history. Yes, there were camps during WWI, so camps today are good things. Well done, genius teacher Bush. Thanks for the lesson in logic. You are so smart.

[kerimparrot]

Some of my Grandparent's friends were interned in camps. They were GERMAN. What about a "memorial" to them?

[randalds]

What is he planning on using them for? A museum? Or to put Muslims in when he convinces enough weak-minded people that they pose a homegrown threat?

[foitimes]

What? No mention of one of the more than 50 internment sites that were used to hold German Americans and Italian Americans!

[foitimes]

What? No mention of not even one of the more than 50 internment sites that held German Americans and Italian Americans!

[themartyred]

WERE THERE REALLLLLY CAMPS?

that's the revisionist lying view. I certainly hope these are going to be used for what the pResident said they were going to be, and not as future interment camps for either muslims, ***, etc....

hey, don't believe me ----????? we did it once less than 70 years ago, what's to say it won't be done again.

and were there really 50 internment camps for germans and italians, I've never heard that.

[themartyred]

WERE THERE REALLLLLY CAMPS?

that's the revisionist lying view. I certainly hope these are going to be used for what the pResident said they were going to be, and not as future interment camps for either muslims, Gay, etc....

hey, don't believe me ----????? we did it once less than 70 years ago, what's to say it won't be done again.

and were there really 50 internment camps for germans and italians, I've never heard that.

[mick7744]

foritimes and kerimparrot,
I'm afraid I never heard of any US internment camps during WWII for German and Italian Americans, although there were certainly plenty of German and Italian Americans arrested for espionage and sabotage activities during that period. No Japanese Americans were ever detected engaging in such practices though.

Some of those German and Italian agents had gone to the trouble of becoming American citizens before spying or whatever and paid with their lives. Most just did time and were deported after the war.

Perhaps these people were held in as many as 50 US jails. Not quite the same thing as being shipped off to Manzanar because of your skin color, I think.

It was wrong then it's wrong now. If Bush& Co are actually using that historical precedent to justify Gitmo, all that can be said is that only someone of Bush's 'unique' intellect and low animal cunning could stoop to using such a shameful part of US history to justify that which is unjustifiable, but then...much more ridiculous rationalizations have worked for them in the past.

[randalds]

I don't know about German interment camps. I do know that during WWII (before I was born) in Battle Creek Michigan there was a German POW camp. From everything I've heard they were actually model prisoners. Several were killed during a train accident and all were buried in the US National Cemetery at Fort Custer there with full military honors.

[tigger2005-2009]

It was wrong then it's wrong now. Bush & Co are Actually planning in using these camps in the near future putting ordinary citzens away because we do not like what there are doing in the world and all that can be said is that only someone of Bush's 'unique' intellect and low animal cunning could stoop to using such a shameful part of US history to justify that which is unjustifiable, but then...much more ridiculous rationalizations have worked for them in the past. Bush family was involved in World war II, not to say more, read about it om internet.
Wake up american people were runing out of time.

[foitimes]

YOu can see a map of the camps, more than 50, just for the German Americans at http://www.foitimes.com/internment/USA5.jpg

[bildooreilly]

what about all the new concentration camps in california and alaska... why aren't illegal aliens being sent to them???

[stanwe55]

Yes, there were Germans and Italians interned. I am the daughter of a German internee. The government ran two programs one "selective" internment and one "en masse" internment. "Selective" internmnet is what they are using today to arrest and incarcerate muslims and denying those incarcerated habeas corpus rughts. The government isn't that interested in publicizing the fact that 15,000 europeans were incarcerated in a "selective" internment program, for obvious reasons. Revisionist history is the exclusion of the full story of WWII internment. The Japanese "en masse" relocation program is the only part of WWII internment that is publicized. It takes the public's eye of the ball. The further fallacy is that those arrested were spys and saboteurs. If the government thought you were a spy they followed you, discovered your network, and then executed you. Almost all that were interned never had charges brought against them, they were ordinary civilians of German and Italian ancestry. Many like my father were recruited into the US Military and military intelligence.