More than $330,000 in federal grants from the National Park Service announced Tuesday will help preserve memories from a World War II-era forced relocation camp in southeast Arkansas that housed about 8,000 Japanese-Americans.
"We really want people to know these stories and how important they are to the history of Arkansas. The lessons are very relevant today, that freedom is a fragile thing," said Gayle Seymour, associate dean for the University of Central Arkansas College of Fine Arts and Communication.
She's coordinating an original artistic dance performance featuring the Atlanta-based CORE dance company after UCA was selected to receive a $75,908 park service grant supporting the performances in November at the Conway university and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville.
Another $254,606 in grant funds will support ongoing efforts at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville to digitize archival documents and other artifacts to link them to the personal stories of camp residents.
"Think about it kind of like a spider web," said Robyn Lane, a research associate with UA's Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, with the goal to publish online a history focused on the connections between people.
About 120,000 Japanese- Americans were forced from their homes into relocation camps like the Rohwer site in Desha County. The U.S. government created the camps after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Another camp, known as the Jerome site, also was built in Arkansas.
At Rohwer, families were housed in barracks that were part of a 500-acre site fenced with barbed wire. Armed guards stood on watch towers at the site, which included schools and recreation areas.
The National Park Service announced funding Tuesday for 20 projects, including the two Arkansas efforts.
The projects are the latest in ongoing work to remember the Arkansas relocation camps. Two years ago, the World War II Japanese American Internment Camp Museum opened in McGehee, about 13 miles southwest of the Rohwer site.
Almost nothing remains of the Rohwer camp, which closed in 1945. But visitors today can see wayside exhibit panels put together by Arkansas State University, a project also funded by the National Park Service, said Ruth Hawkins, director of ASU's Arkansas Heritage Sites program.
The Rohwer site also features audio exhibits narrated by actor George Takei of Star Trek fame. Takei's family was forced from California to live in the Rohwer camp when he was 5 years old.
Hawkins said Arkansas universities, including the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, have done various preservation work.
UA's efforts involve its Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies. Using engineering documents and photographs -- and supported by an earlier National Park Foundation grant -- the center is working on 3-D visualizations of a housing barracks.
Lane, with the center, said the latest grant will allow for more such visualizations of the Rohwer site. The project, including other digital archives, can be viewed at risingabove.cast.uark.edu. It's being done in partnership with the Arkansas History Commission, Lane said.
Seymour described a dance project whose collaborators include visual designer Nancy Chikaraishi, a Drury University associate professor of architecture whose parents lived at the Rohwer site.
"We're really excited to allow the arts to be a way to access history and to really bring these subjects from the past alive to people today," Seymour said.
Metro on 06/17/2015