Biden signs law to help preserve Japanese American WWII incarceration camps

A new law signed by President Joe Biden on Wednesday will help memorialize the history of the U.S. government's incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The legislation, spearheaded by Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, would reauthorize funds that help preserve the sites in which tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were detained, including Manzanar in California and Rohwer in Arkansas.

“The internment of Japanese American citizens remains one of the darkest and most shameful periods in our history,” Schatz said in a statement about the law. “The stories of so many who unjustly lost their freedom, lost property, and were forcibly uprooted from their homes should be a constant reminder of our duty to uphold the rights of every American.”

The Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act was introduced in the House in March 2021 and passed without objection this year before gaining Senate approval. Mineta, a former secretary of transportation who died last May, was the first Asian American to become a Cabinet secretary and had spent two years in an incarceration camp.

The act will not only renew funding for the 2006 Japanese American Confinement Sites Program, but also designate $10 million for grants to understand the “use and abuse of power,” and promote awareness around this dark period in American history.


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