National Trust Names Minidoka Internment National Monument in Idaho One of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places

WWII Era Japanese Internment Camp Suffers from Local Development Threats

Washington, D.C. (June 14, 2007) –Today,  the National Trust for Historic Preservation named the Minidoka Internment National Monument in Hunt, Jerome County, Idaho, to its 2007 list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Ten weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and amid widespread anti-Japanese hysteria, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, providing the legal basis for the incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans at ten War Relocation Authority “Relocation Centers.” In the single largest compulsory relocation in U.S. history, the government forced Nikkei (Japanese American citizens and legal resident aliens of Japanese ancestry) to leave their homes, jobs and businesses and live in camps under armed guard. Located on an isolated site in rural, south central Idaho, the Minidoka Relocation Center (also called the Hunt Camp) operated from August 1942 to October 1945. The complex held approximately 13,000 internees from Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska and included 600 buildings, five miles of barbed wire fencing, and eight guard towers. Although the camp was disassembled in 1945, several key structures, numerous archaeological features, and important cultural landscape elements remain to tell the story. Minidoka also serves as an important commemorative site for thousands of former internees and their families who memorialize the wartime hardships and sacrifices of Japanese Americans by making an annual pilgrimage to the site.

The historic significance of the Minidoka Relocation Center is well-recognized. Six acres of the site were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and the camp site was named an Idaho Centennial Site in 1990. In 2001, 72.75 acres at the core of the former camp was designated a National Monument under the management of the National Park Service (NPS). Since designation, the National Monument has been engaged in a comprehensive planning process for the development and interpretation of the site, working with interested citizens through a public consultation process.  The recently completed General Management Plan envisions a reconstructed barracks complex, and interpretation of the camp’s history as well as the nearby “Farm in a Day” site. However, the Monument’s plans are now significantly threatened by nearby development, proposed under current local land use regulations. Just last year, residents of Jerome County had to fight the proposed siting of a coal-fired power plant that would have posed a significant environmental threat and severely hampered the visitor experience at Minidoka. Now the site is similarly threatened by a proposal to develop a 13,000-head dairy heifer replacement facility approximately 1.25 miles upwind from the National Monument. A concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) of this magnitude would have a dramatic adverse effect on the Monument, and seriously degrade the visitor experience by introducing strong and offensive odors, flies, and other insects. Other risks to the site and visitors include airborne pathogens and dust.

“Minidoka testifies to a dark period in American history. Although the forced relocation of thousands of American citizens was an unprecedented violation of constitutional rights, few at the time raised their voices to protest,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “Sixty-five years after they were stripped of their dignity and their freedom, former internees and their descendants may now be stripped of this evocative link to their place in American history, and we can’t stand by and let that happen.”

History: In the 1800s, many emigrants from Japan crossed the Pacific Ocean to seek economic opportunity in America. The pioneers (Issei) and their American-born children (Nisei) encountered various forms of racial prejudice in the United States.

More than two-thirds of internees at the ten Relocation Centers were American citizens by birth. Those who came to the Minidoka Relocation Center, also known as the Hunt Camp, found a hastily constructed facility ill-suited for the extreme climate of south central Idaho. The camp consisted of administration and warehouse buildings, 44 residential blocks, schools, fire stations, hospital, post office and an assortment of shops and stores, and a cemetery. The hastily-built barracks had no insulation to combat winter temperatures as low as -21 degrees. Spring, with its ankle-deep mud and blinding dust storms, was followed by scorching summertime heat, with temperatures soaring well over 100 degrees.

Despite their internment, most Japanese Americans remained intensely loyal to the United States, and many volunteered for military service. Of the ten relocation centers, Minidoka had the highest number of volunteers, about 1,000 internees — nearly ten percent of the camp's peak population. Many fought with the famed 442nd Regimental Combat Unit, which saw extensive action in France and Italy and was the most decorated unit of its size and length of service in American military history. Seventy-three soldiers from Minidoka died while fighting for their country and two received the Medal of Honor, the highest military honor awarded in the United States.

Threat: Minidoka Internment Camp faces a number of threats. Although the camp was disassembled after the war, the National Monument and adjoining properties include a broad collection of buildings and structures from the internment camp period. The Monument contains remnants of the Military Police guard house, the visitor reception building, a rock garden constructed by internees for display of the camp honor roll, and a large, hand-dug root cellar constructed by internees to store the crops grown at the camp. Unfortunately, while the National Monument was designated over seven years ago, limited funds and staff mean that there are no visitor services at the site, and most interpretation takes place many miles away through a temporary exhibit at Hagerman Fossil Beds National Monument. Furthermore, many significant resources lie outside of the current National Monument boundary. Nearby properties include camp supply warehouses, numerous barracks reused as farm buildings, an intact camp fire station, foundations and footprints of staff housing areas, and hundreds of archaeological features related to the camp.

An additional significant threat is posed by the 13,000-head dairy heifer replacement facility proposed just upwind of the site. Industrial agriculture at this scale has enormous environmental consequences, yet when this animal production facility was initially proposed last year, county land use regulations did not permit the National Park Service, the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the non-profit Friends of Minidoka, Idaho Concerned Area Residents for the Environment (ICARE), the former internees and their families, or anyone else that lived more than one mile from the proposed CAFO to comment on the plan.  The first application for this CAFO was withdrawn, but it has since been resubmitted. It is still unclear whether anyone whose primary residence is outside a one-mile radius from the proposed facility will be allowed to testify at public hearings or submit written comments.

Solutions:  The National Park Service conducted a comprehensive, highly inclusive, five-year process to create a General Management Plan for the Minidoka Internment National Monument. When implemented, the Plan would develop interpretive and educational programming at the Minidoka site. In addition, legislation is currently pending before Congress that would expand the boundaries of the National Monument in Idaho and add an important related site on Bainbridge Island, Washington, thus bringing more resources under protection and enhancing interpretive opportunities. This legislation complements legislation recently signed into law by President Bush (supported by the National Trust) that authorizes the creation of a $38 million grant program to ensure the protection of all ten Japanese Internment Camps. Unfortunately, funds for the program have yet to be appropriated.

Funding alone will not eliminate the immediate threat posed by the development of a 13,000-head concentrated animal feeding operation approximately 1.25 miles upwind of the Minidoka Internment National Monument. The impacts of CAFOs on air and water quality are both well documented and significant. In Idaho, the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate CAFOs through National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits as potential point sources for industrial wastewater pollution. Minidoka Internment National Monument and other historic sites and communities could be better protected through the enactment and enforcement of local, state, and federal permitting processes that are required to consider the impact these industrial facilities have on communities and historic resources.

2007 marks the 20^th listing of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places

Since 1988, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has used its list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places as a powerful alarm to raise awareness of the serious threats facing the nation’s greatest treasures.  This year, the Trust celebrates the list as one of the most effective tools in the fight to save the country’s irreplaceable architectural, cultural and natural heritage.  The list, which has identified 189 sites through 2007, has been so successful in galvanizing preservation efforts across the country and rallying resources to save one-of-a-kind landmarks that in just two decades, an astounding 52 percent of the sites have been saved and rehabilitated.  While the fight is not over for many of these historic places, only 6 sites have been lost since the Trust launched the 11 Most Endangered program.  For more information, visit www.nationaltrust.org/11most/20th.

America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places has identified 189 threatened one-of-a-kind historic treasures since 1988. While a listing does not ensure the protection of a site or guarantee funding, the designation has been a powerful tool for raising awareness and rallying resources to save endangered sites from every region of the country. Whether these sites are urban districts or rural landscapes, Native American landmarks or 20th-century sports arenas, entire communities or single buildings, the list spotlights historic places across America that are threatened by neglect, insufficient funds, inappropriate development or insensitive public policy. For more information, visit www.nationaltrust.org/11most.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation is a private, nonprofit membership organization dedicated to protecting the irreplaceable.  Recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the Trust was founded in 1949 and provides leadership, education, advocacy, and resources to save America’s diverse historic places and revitalize communities. Its Washington, DC headquarters staff, six regional offices and 28 historic sites work with the Trust’s 270,000 members and thousands of local community groups in all 50 states.  For more information, visit the Trust’s web site at www.nationaltrust.org.