Saving History's Dark Side

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By the same token, the commitment to preservation and documentation at Minidoka will hopefully serve as a monument to American civil liberties. Jim Azumano, president of Friends of Minidoka, a group of internees and their relatives, tells Preservation that "Minidoka plays a role in the evolution of civil liberties... a fundamental part of the American way of life."

And so, even after President Reagan signed an official apology and authorized reparations in 1988, Minidoka reminds us of how an unwanted chapter of the American past speaks not to popular myth, but to the country's founding tenets. "This is not a Japanese-American story," surviving Minidoka internee Yosh Nakagawa says. "This is an American story. Let us not forget it, so that today and tomorrow we don't make the same mistake."

Go there >>Inside America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places: The National Park Service Vows to Restore Idaho's Minidoka Internment Camp

Go there, too >> Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project

And there >> Friends of Minidoka

Related Links:

• Minidoka National Monument

Related Links from the Utne Reader Archive:

• Romancing the Republic: Disney and the Pentagon Whitewash Pearl Harbor
• The Decade of Atonement

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