AUTHOR OF 'IMPRISONED IN PARADISE' TO DISCUSS WW II KOOSKIA CAMP STORY

Author and researcher Priscilla Wegars will discuss the contents of her book, Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Internment Camp at a public program set for the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, July 16, beginning at 2 p.m.

During the war, the U.S. government falsely imprisoned over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. The great majority (110,000) was held in 10 major domestic concentration camps run by the War Relocation Authority (WRA), but the government segregated thousands of Japanese nationals living in the country in internment camps run by the Justice Department. Most of these individuals were considered community leaders and "dangerous", even though many of them were cultural teachers, martial arts instructors or Buddhist priests.

The Kooskia Internment Camp was run from 1943 to mid-1945, and its prisoners were charged with a specific project: building the Lewis-Clark Highway (now Highway 12) between Lewiston, Idaho and Missoula, Montana (which was a location for another Justice Department camp). According to Wegars’ research, Kooskia held approximately 265 "enemy aliens" of Japanese ancestry, an Italian and later a German doctor, 25 Caucasian employees (including several women), and one Japanese American to censor the mail. Twenty-seven were Japanese Peruvians as well as two from Panama and 11 from Mexico.

Kooskia was unique in that most of the Japanese prisoners had volunteered to work on the highway out of other confinement sites. Its operation was covered by the terms of the Geneva Convention and by the standards of the other camps, the food and shelter were better. The wages, which drew the volunteers, were also helpful to the prisoners’ families.

Wegars is a volunteer curator at the University of Idaho’s Asian American Comparative Collection, a resource center of artifacts, images and bibliographical materials. She spent her time tracking down minute details, including the menus from the canteen, photographs from newspapers, mug shots and diaries. While much research has been done on the WRA camps, less has been written about the Justice Department camp stories.