In February 1942, two months after the United States formally entered World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced relocation and incarceration of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on America’s West Coast. Families were forced to leave their homes and belongings behind to live surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers in one of ten isolated concentration camps constructed in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming.

One of those camps was the Minidoka War Relocation Center, located in southern Idaho. Between August 1942 and October 1945, nearly 13,000 people of Japanese ancestry from Oregon, Washington and Alaska — the majority of whom were American citizens — were forcibly removed from their communities and incarcerated at Minidoka.

The Minidoka concentration camp was centered around a 950-acre core, although the total site spanned 33,000 acres. In 2001, Minidoka Internment National Monument was established on 73 acres of the original camp site still owned by the federal government to commemorate the hardships and sacrifices endured by Japanese Americans incarcerated there during World War II.

The National Park Service (NPS) faced a challenge in preserving Minidoka — critical lands it needed to tell Minidoka’s story were outside the congressionally authorized boundary of the site. In 2008, the Idaho congressional delegation helped pass bipartisan legislation authorizing boundary expansion and allowing the NPS to incorporate new land into what is now Minidoka National Historic Site.

The Conservation Fund’s Efforts at Minidoka

Before the boundary expansion was authorized, a vital property neighboring the park went up for sale. The Conservation Fund stepped in quickly, purchasing the 128-acre property and holding it until the NPS could secure funding through the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) to acquire the lands and add them to the Minidoka site. With this acquisition, the NPS was able to protect a historic fire station and begin to reconstruct a residential barracks block in its original location to enhance interpretation and visitor education. This key property also contained the site of one of the baseball fields incarcerees constructed and used for recreation; that baseball field has been rebuilt on this location to provide visitors a historic perspective on life in the camp.

Then in 2008, TCF acquired 100 more acres adjoining the national historic site, including an adjacent farm that was the site of Minidoka’s military police headquarters, portions of the adjacent Army residential blocks and the camp’s hospital and elementary school.

In addition to transferring a small, key portion of the lands to the park service through the LWCF program, TCF donated a conservation easement on the balance of the property to the NPS, which will ensure it stays open, undeveloped farmland forever. These agricultural lands are now owned by a local Idaho family and contain relics of the original Minidoka camp that are being preserved by the landowner in accordance with the conservation easement.

It is projected that the national historic site will bring positive economic benefits to the community. Once fully developed, it is expected to attract up to 80,000 visitors per year and generate approximately $5 million annually for the regional economy.

Why This Project Matters

The acquisition of these lands allowed the NPS to reconstruct key structures of the historic site in their original locations, helping to fully tell the story of the hardships endured by Japanese Americans incarcerated at Minidoka. These reconstructions include a guard tower and the Honor Roll, which held the names of every prisoner of Minidoka who left to fight in World War II. Visitors can learn about life at Minidoka and how Americans came to be imprisoned by their own country through exhibits at the site’s visitor center and along a 1.6-mile interpretive trail.

This project also generated jobs and significant economic activity in southern Idaho. While the visitor center is open only during the summer season, the park recorded over 13,000 visitors in 2019.

Learn More

• Insights: “Reflecting on the Incarceration of Japanese Americans” by Kurt Ikeda
• Video: Watch “A Challenge to Democracy,” a 1940s-era film produced by the War Relocation Authority, to get an idea of what the camps looked like and how the government explained the incarceration of its own citizens.
• Since 2003, the annual Minidoka Pilgrimage offers an opportunity for former incarcerees to safely revisit the site and the memories it evokes amidst family, friends, supporters and NPS officials.