HVNP to Screen Film on Japanese Internment During WW2

PC: HVNP

Japanese American internment during World War II is a historical fact that hits home as hard in Hawai‘i as anywhere in the United States.

Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park will host a special After Dark in the Park program on Japanese American internment during the war at 7 p.m. on Feb. 18, 2020. The new film, Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp will be shown.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the exclusion and unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese American citizens and legal residents of Japanese ancestry living in the United States during World War II. Today, the National Park Service protects and collaboratively manages some of the former internment camps including Manzanar, Tule Lake, Minidoka and Honouliuli.

The park will preview the newly released 30-minute film Minidoka: An American Concentration Camp, which reveals how unconstitutional imprisonment not only turned lives upside down but continues to ripple through generations and serves as a warning today.

Most people are unaware that Kīlauea Military Camp in Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park was also used as a Japanese internment camp during World War II. Following the movie, National Park Service Archeologist Dr. Jadelyn Moniz-Nakamura will discuss the experience and subsequent detention of Japanese Americans there following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor.

For more information on Japanese American confinement during World War II, go online.

After Dark in the Park is one of many programs sponsored by the Friends of Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park.