Minidoka

Dec. 7, 1941: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

February 1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, sending nearly 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans into 10 relocation centers in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

June 1942: The Morrison-Knudsen Co. begins building the Minidoka camp. The camp is also called "Hunt," after the nearest post office.

August 1942: The 33,000-acre Minidoka camp opens and will house more than 9,000 internees.

WWII Era Japanese Internment Camp Suffers from Local Development Threats

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.”

Big Sky voted down 2-1, case likely headed to court

By Matt Christensen - Times-News
Edition Date: 10/10/07

Proposed site is a mile from Minidoka camp where Japanese were held

By Anna Webb - The Idaho Statesman
Edition Date: 10/02/07

When Japan attacked the United States in 1941, Gus Tanaka was 19, a student at Reed College in Portland, the son of an American-born doctor.

"The FBI was ringing our doorbell four hours after Pearl Harbor," he said.

A proposed feedlot near the Minidoka national monument meets all state and federal standards, an attorney says.

By Anna Webb, Idaho Statesman
Edition Date: 09/28/07

Karen Yoshitomi and Janeil Stewart both brought family photographs to the Jerome County Courthouse Tuesday.

They were there to testify against a proposal by Big Sky Farms of Eden to build a 13,000-cow feedlot a mile from the Minidoka Internment National Monument.

Case likely headed to court no matter county's ruling

By Matt Christensen - Times-News Writer
Edition Date: 09/26/07

Hearing for controversial feedlot features emotional testimony

By Matt Christensen - Times-News Writer
Edition Date: 09/25/07

By Larry Meyer - Argus Observer
Edition Date: 09/22/07

PAYETTE - A group of local people will hop on a bus and journey to Jerome County for a public hearing Tuesday in an effort to oppose the construction of a large dairy near the site of the Minidoka Internment National Monument in south central Idaho.

The Minidoka camp is where many Japanese-Americans were held during the World War II, including many who later settled in the Treasure Valley area, and it has been named as a National Historic Site.

Anna Webb, Idaho Statesman

September 20, 2007 - Few tangible remnants of the Minidoka Internment Camp remain, said Dan Everhart of Preservation Idaho.

The few that do include a potato cellar built by internees and a memorial garden in tribute to the Japanese American soldiers who served and died in the war.

A $38 million grant program may revive the memory of World War II internment camps.

By Mead Gruver - The Associated Press
Edition Date: 09/20/07

The Japanese-Americans imprisoned at Heart Mountain, and dozens of similar internment camps during World War II, do not want their forced relocation to be forgotten.

On Tuesday they'll have an opportunity to share their thoughts on preserving the sites during a series of public hearings on a new $38 million federal grant program.