House approves Bainbridge Island, WA., internment memorial

[flamingyouth]

WASHINGTON -- The House on Tuesday approved a long-delayed plan to designate a spot on Bainbridge Island, Wash. - where hundreds of Japanese-Americans were once forced from their homes on the way to prison camps - as a national historic site.

In March 1942, 227 Japanese-Americans were forced from their homes under order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and marched to the Eagledale Ferry Dock, on their way to internment camps in Idaho and California.

The men, women and children - two-thirds of them U.S. citizens - were the first of what eventually became more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned on the West Coast during World War II.

The House unanimously approved a bill to make the former Eagledale dock and a memorial under construction there part of the national park system. The site would be a satellite of the Minidoka Internment National Monument Idaho, one of two U.S. internment camps that now have national-park designation.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420AP_WST_Internment_Memorial.html

[karlrschneider]

1. I first read that as INTERNET memorial! Yikes.

Good thing though...long overdue. I was born that month and didn't even know about the camps for years.
A shameful bit of history.

[stevedeshazer]

2. Long overdue

Guantanamo will prove even worse. :(

[Fenris]

3. I'm glad Inslee is spearheading this.

A very worthy cause.