U.S. Senator Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) today commended Vice President Al Gore's announcement of a $4.8 million initiative to gather and preserve knowledge about a significant piece of America's World War II history on the "Home Front." The initiative would preserve several World War II-era Japanese-American internment sites throughout the Western United States as historical sites.

The announcement preceded today's release of the most comprehensive survey ever on the history and status of World War II internment camps. The 400-page, National Park Service report, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites, catalogs in detail the history and current condition of internment camps and other facilities where about 120,000 Japanese Americans were relocated during the war. Over the course of the war, a total of 1,875 Hawaii residents of Japanese ancestry were removed and interned on the mainland.

The report bolsters the need to preserve World War II internment camps–an effort which the Vice President announced last week. This $4.8 million initiative proposed for FY 2001 would finance the construction of a new visitor center at the Manzanar National Historic Site in California, acquisition and protection of other former camp sites, construction of an interpretive exhibit near a former work camp in Arizona, and the start of a Park Service study of "World War II on the Home Front."

"I am happy to see work that I started with former Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) in 1991 taken another step forward by the Vice President's initiative," Akaka said. Senator Akaka and Senator Cranston worked in the Senate to pass legislation establishing the Manzanar National Historic Site and the Japanese American National Historic Landmark Theme Study Act. [Public Law 102-248, 3/3/92.]

Akaka continued, "During Senate consideration of our legislation in 1992, I said the following and stand by these words, 'Solely on the basis of race, all persons of Japanese ancestry, regardless of citizenship or loyalty, without proof or justification, were denied their civil rights. ... By designating these significant locations as national historic sites and landmarks, we commemorate this unfortunate period in our Nation's history. We remember the broader consequences of allowing hysteria and racial prejudice to override constitutional rights, and we teach this lesson to our children, to avoid a repetition of our mistakes of the past.'

"In my ongoing commitment to preserve this sad legacy and educate this and future generations, I am pleased to support this initiative and will advocate that it be funded in the upcoming appropriations cycle for FY 2001."