Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program

The Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program was established on December 21, 2006, when President George W. Bush signed HR 1492 (Public Law 109-441, 16 USC 461) into law. The roots of the legislation stemmed from the formation of the National Japanese American Political Action Committee (JaAmPAC) three years earlier by a coalition of community leaders. A non-partisan political action committee, one of the group's areas of emphasis was contributing to members of Congress "in support of issues or projects that are uniquely important to Americans of Japanese ancestry or that increase understanding of the historic significance of Japanese American experiences during World War II." In September 2003, JaAmPAC announced that its initial legislative initiative would be to seek a camp preservation program that would have all former Japanese American confinement sites on federally owned land be managed by the National Park Service. In 2004, the Japanese American National Heritage Committee (JANHC), a coalition of Japanese American heritage organizations, formed to support this legislation, with Washington, D.C. based attorney Gerald Yamada becoming its coordinator and spokesperson. ^[1]

In January 2005, Representative Bill Thomas (R-California) introduced the camp preservation legislation advocated by JANHC. Thomas, a conservative Republican and the powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, had had Japanese American childhood friends who had suffered through the incarceration and was also a close friend of incoming Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) Director of Public Affairs/Washington, D.C. Representative Floyd Mori, whom he had served in the California State Assembly with in the 1970s. Along with Nikkei Representatives Doris Matsui (D-California) and Mike Honda (D-California), Thomas introduced HR 1492 on April 6 to replace the earlier legislation. The new bill called for the authorization of $38 million in grants for preservation projects at the former sites, along with a 25% match requirement, with the program to be administered by the National Park Service (NPS). At a subsequent hearing the NPS noted its opposition to the legislation, citing the cost of administering the program without provision for any additional funding. HR 1492 nonetheless passed the House by voice vote in November 2005 and the Senate a year later, though the latter changed the match requirement to 50%. The amended bill reached the president's desk on December 5, 2006 and was signed into law some two weeks later. ^[2]

The legislation called for the NPS to award grants for the purposes of "identifying, researching, evaluating, interpreting, protecting, restoring, repairing, and acquiring historic confinement sites" with land acquisition funding approved only for four sites ( Jerome , Rohwer , Topaz , and Honouliuli ). To get public input in creating grant criteria and processes, the NPS organized twenty listening sessions in nineteen cities in September and October 2007, along with a national meeting in Los Angeles in January 2008. In all over 1,000 people attended one of the meetings or submitted comments separately. Based on this input, the NPS submitted a report to the House Committee on Appropriations on May 21, 2008 outlining various parameters of the program, including setting minimum ($5,000) and maximum (10% of the total $38 million authorization) grants, eligible project categories, and submission limits (a single applicant could submit up to three applications, but can only be funded once per cycle). Evaluation criteria included "need for project, long-term impact, sustainability, feasibility, support for project from stakeholders and partners, and capacity of applicant to manage project." ^[3]

Congress made the first appropriations of about $1 million for the program in 2009. In that year, the NPS awarded nineteen grants totaling $970,000, with the largest grant of $292,253 awarded to the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center . In subsequent years, the program received annual appropriations of approximately $3 million and awarded nearly all of that amount in grants, claiming that less than four percent of the total was used to administer the program. In a typical year, the annual grant announcement went out in August or September for a November deadline. After receiving the applications, the NPS convened a committee of six staff from a variety of backgrounds who met in Lakewood, Colorado, in December to review the proposals. After the appropriate approval and reviews, the announcement of grant recipients by the secretary of the interior generally took place in the spring or summer of the following year, with the projects starting that fall. Projects were typically two years in duration, though many were extended.

By the end of 2022, JACS has awarded 289 grants, with the average grant amounting to about $135,000. About 55% of grant applications were funded.

In line with the original intent of the program, site based construction or restoration projects have drawn the largest grants by dollar amount. Construction of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center near the site of the camp drew over $1.1 million in grants in the first two years of the program, including the single largest grant of the program's first phase, $832,879 in 2010. A chimney restoration project at Heart Mountain drew a $215,911 grant in 2011, while a project to stabilize and restore a root cellar there drew four grants totaling some $1.4 million. A grant of $714,314 in 2012 went toward the construction of the Topaz Museum in Delta, Utah; two additional grants totaling $545,186 went toward the planning and construction of exhibitions there. A third site adjacent museum, the World War II Japanese American Internment Museum in McGehee, Arkansas, received JACS funding for construction/restoration in the amount of $434,967 in 2010. The Rohwer site was also among those receiving funds for preservation projects, including two grants for the conservation of the cemetery totaling $470,706. Various projects at the Amache , Colorado site—restoration/reconstruction of a water tower, recreation hall, barrack, and laundry building along with related planning and interpretation—received multiple grants totaling over $1.1 million. At the Minidoka , Idaho, site, a a guard tower restoration project received a $280,378 award in 2012. Among non-WRA sites, the Fort Missoula , Montana site received grants for the restoration of the historic courtroom and for the rehabilitation and reconstruction of barracks totaling over $600,000, while the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial received a similar amount. ^[4]

JACS also awarded many grants to digitization, oral history, and other projects that have made primary materials documenting the roundup and incarceration widely available. The Bancroft Library at the University of California at Berkeley has received five grants totaling over $1.4 million to digitize and make available online an enormous cache of War Relocation Authority and Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study records. California State University at Dominguez Hills received two grants totaling over $600,000 to digitize thousands of documents and oral histories from the libraries of the California State University library system. Many other organizations including the Japanese American National Museum (JANM), National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), and Densho received grants for oral history or digitization projects.

Many other grants went to interpretive or educational projects such as films/videos, exhibitions, and curriculum projects. JACS funded such documentary films as The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i (2012), A Bitter Legacy (2016), and Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust (2021) among many others. It also funded including core incarceration centered museum exhibitions at the Go For Broke National Educational Center, Japanese American Museum of San Jose, and California Museum as well as traveling or temporary exhibitions including Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II (Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission, 2014), Only the Oaks Remain: The Story of Tuna Canyon Detention Station (Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition/San Fernando Valley Japanese American Community Center, 2016), and Contested Histories: Art and Artifacts from the Allen Hendershott Eaton Collection (JANM, 2018). Among the many curriculum development or teacher workshop centered projects funded by JACS, the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i, NJAHS, and Fred T. Korematsu Institute received multiple grants. Other notable interpretive or educational projects include the video game Mission US: Prisoner in My Homeland by WNET (funded for $400,000 in 2015) and 3D renderings of Topaz, Tule Lake, and Manzanar by CyArk ($240,611 in 2011) and of Rohwer by the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville ($300,378 in 2013 and $254,606 in 2015).

With the $38 million authorized by the original legislation used up after the 2022 round of grants, Rep. Matsui introduced legislation that would permanently reauthorize the program, while also establishing a separate five-year, $2 million per year grant to create educational material about the incarceration in October 2020. A senate version of the bill was introduced in March 2021. On January 4, 2023, President Joe Biden signed the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education (JACE) Act into law. This legislation established a new JACE grant program that would provide $10 million in funding to larger education projects centered on the wartime incarceration. It also reauthorized the JACS program and provided another $42 million in funding. The first JACE grants totaling $3.4 million were awarded in 2025 to Densho, the National Japanese American Historical Society and a coalition led by the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. ^[5]

Official website: https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1379/index.htm