Many of us these days are contemplating the various ways that cultural and ethnic erasure play out globally. In one example in the U.S., there’s been a recent clash between the government and survivors of Japanese American incarceration camps over the development of land near a memorial that’s crucial to the community.
According to a report by The Associated Press, the Bureau of Land Management is planning to build a wind farm that would include 118 square miles of 400 turbines near the Minidoka National Historic Site in Jerome, Idaho — one of the few remaining sacred spaces for Japanese American survivors of U.S. incarceration camps.
A group of survivors are trying to stop this, arguing that the project will challenge the accessibility of the memorial, and that building the wind farm here will contribute to the erasure of a crucial moment in Japanese American history.
For decades, the Minidoka National Historic Site has been a place of healing for survivors who were forcibly shuttled into concentration camps in the supposed interest of national security after the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor. During this time, the government saw even innocent civilians, including children, as a threat ― based on nothing more than their race, and despite the fact that these individuals had no prior history of violence.
From 1942 to 1946, 10 incarceration camps were scattered across the western United States — some of them on tribal lands. According to the National Archives, the camps held 120,000 Japanese Americans, adults and children alike, who were forced to leave their homes and everything they knew for a life of heightened surveillance and state-sanctioned violence.
Since closing these camps in 1946, the government has done little to keep a physical record of this history ― outside of Minidoka, which became a national park in 2001. Now, it serves as a memorial for survivors and their families visiting the site. The land holds the truth about their experiences of…
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