All too often, crucial information is omitted from news items, robbing them of needed context.

The photo and caption of Fort Sill, Okla. (“Military to hold migrant children,” Star-Advertiser, June 12) said that the military base will be a location for a new temporary shelter to house migrant children and said that it was “used once before as a temporary emergency shelter.”

What was not included is that Fort Sill was used during World War II as an internment camp for Japanese-Americans. Surely the editors were cognizant of this fact as it has been mentioned in multiple stories by leading news services; furthermore, Fort Sill was previously used as a boarding school for Native American children and as a prisoner-of-war camp for Apache tribal members.

I would think that this historical context — the prior use of this facility to imprison vulnerable minorities — would be of interest to Star-Advertiser readers, particularly given Hawaii’s large proportion of Japanese-Americans and internment camp survivors, and should have been included.

Beth Kupper-Herr

Kaaawa

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