The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii will receive $111,557 from the National Park Service to help educate the public about the Honouliuli Internment Camp on Oahu — one of 13 internment sites where Japanese-Americans were detained during World War II.
In announcing the park service grant, U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, whose grandfather was interned at Honouliuli, said the money will be used to develop a multimedia and virtual tour of the camp.
Last year, Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed a Senate bill creating an advisory group to come up with recommendations for an educational resource center at the site of the former internment camp in Kunia, where as many as 300 Japanese-Americans were held.
Members of the advisory group include representatives from the Historic Preservation Division, UH-West Oahu, Japanese American Citizens League, Historic Hawai‘i Foundation and Monsanto Hawaii.
Monsanto Hawaii, a seed company, owns the land where the former internment camp is located.
After Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, martial law was declared in the territory of Hawaii. Because 160,000 people in Hawaii of Japanese ancestry made up almost 40 percent of the islands’ population and were vital to the economy, the incarceration of all Japanese-Americans here was neither feasible nor desirable. In 1943, however, about 150 Japanese-Americans were relocated to Honouliuli. About 300 Japanese-Americans would be interned at the camp along with residents of German and Italian descent. The site was closed in 1945.
Honouliuli was the largest internment site in Hawaii during the war.
Although the camp was demolished after World War II, the remnants of two buildings are still visible in Kunia.
Under a federal law passed in 2009, the National Park Service is working on a two-year study of Japanese internment sites in Hawaii. A preliminary draft of the study is expected to be ready later this summer.
Hawaii internment camp sites were also at the Wailua jail, Kalaheo stockade at Lihue Plantation, and Waimea jail on Kauai; U.S. Immigration Station, and Sand Island Detention Camp on Oahu; the Kaunakakai jail on Molokai; the Lanai City jail on Lanai; the Wailuku county jail and Kaiku Camp on Maui; and the Waiakea prison camp and Kilauea Military Camp on Hawaii island.
The Honouliuli facility was constructed specifically for the internment of civilians and to house prisoners of war.
The money is the latest in a series of National Park Service grants the Japanese Cultural Center has received for the continued study and preservation of Honouliuli and other Hawaii camps. Past grants to the center included:
»$43,187 in 2009 to create a traveling exhibit to increase public awareness.
»$117,626 in 2010 to produce a one-hour documentary on the story of Hawaii internees.
»$38,565 in 2011 to hire and train guides to conduct tours of the Honouliuli Kunia site.
»$64,795 in 2012 for an educational program for high school students and teachers. The project will culminate with a public event in May featuring student projects.
The goal of the National Park resource study is to determine the best way to preserve the camps and tell their history.
About 120,000 Japanese-Americans, most of them U.S. citizens, were incarcerated on the mainland during World War II. The sites of the Manzanar, Minidoka and Tule Lake Internment Camps are now units of the National Park System.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Civil Liberties Act, signed in August 1988 by President Ronald Reagan, which acknowledged the federal government’s unjust actions against Japanese-Americans during World War II. Each surviving internee received a formal apology and $20,000 in restitution.
