Monday, June 27, 2011

Site of Rohwer Internment Camp Gets Grant Money

The KUAR website has announced that Arkansas will receive $400,000 in Federal grant money for its projects devoted to the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

I visited Rohwer in November, 2009 as part of my research for my novel, BROKEN DOLLS. In my blog post, "Rohwer Whispers," I wrote about visiting the site--the impact it had, the secrets it shared.

KUAR's article quoted Dr. Johanna Miller Lewis, Project Director of Life Interrupted: The Rohwer Cemetery Preservation Project:

“We need to learn from our mistakes and I think it is especially important in Arkansas because civil rights is so much an important part of the state’s history and this is just another chapter of civil rights in the state of Arkansas.”

To learn from our mistakes, we must remember our mistakes. It is the reason I wrote BROKEN DOLLS.

4 comments:

  1. Jan, I'm indebted to you for filling in some history I didn't know I had. I spent many happy days at my aunt and uncle's house in Tillar, not far from Rohwer. That was in the 50s, not long after the camp was closed. Little do we know of what's transpired in the places we've been.

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  2. I'm glad they are getting grant money. Unfortunately, American history is full of many ugly instances of man's inhumanity to man. We tend to put them in a little box and hide them in the attic like they never happened. It's important that future generations know the truth and learn from our mistakes.

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  3. You ought to do a book signing there!!!!

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  4. Well, somewhere close where people will be. ;)

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