University architecture students will present plans today for ways to memorialize Japanese Americans interned in an Idaho camp during World War II.
The plans will be presented in conjunction with the final of four Joel Yamauchi Lectures remembering internment in the Pacific Northwest. Tonight’s speaker, Wendy Janssen, is the superintendent of the Minidoka National Historic Site. She will speak about the future of the site as it finds a way to properly remember the interned.
The southern Idaho site held nearly 10,000 Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1945, and approximately 4,000 of those interned – most of whom were U.S. citizens – came from the state of Oregon, architecture professor Kevin Nute said.
The Minidoka National Historic Site “preserves the history and cultural resources associated with the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans,” according to a University release, but does not currently have any visitor facilities, Nute said.
The National Parks Service has drafted priorities for proper ways to use the site, and Nute said architecture students are presenting plans to use the land “that’s not going to take away from the events that happened there.” When the internment camp occupied the site, it was the seventh-biggest city in Idaho, he said.
The lecture begins at 7 p.m. in 115 Lawrence Hall.
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Students plan World War II memorial
Daily Emerald
June 2, 2009
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