The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii will seek grant funds to support projects to preserve the history of Japanese-Americans who were unjustly confined to internment camps during World War II.

The National Park Service is offering $3 million in grants for fiscal year 2017 to support initiatives as part of the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program (JACS), established in 2006.

Since the program was established, Congress authorized up to $38 million in grants to be awarded over the life of the program. More than $21 million in grants to 163 projects involving 20 states and the District of Columbia has been awarded by the program so far.

The center will submit an application for the next round of program grants to support new projects, said Carole Hayashino, president and executive director of the cultural center. “This program by the federal government is very important to our community,” she said. “This allows organizations like the Japanese Cultural Center to do projects and document our history.”

For many years the organization has been a recipient of the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program to help educate the public, especially younger generations, of the injustice that occurred during the war when more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were confined to internment camps because the government questioned their loyalty to the U.S.

The cultural center is currently working on two projects funded by grants awarded to the organization last year by the program.

The first project, “Power of Place,” will be a publication on a compilation of archaeological research conducted at Honouliuli, the largest internment camp in Hawaii.

In 2015 President Barack Obama designated the site in Kunia as a national monument. Research and planning for the monument is underway.

The second project is a series of short documentary films on 16 other confinement sites in Hawaii. Hayashino said the short films will highlight stories of Japanese-Americans who were interned at Maui, Kauai and Hawaii island.