Cultural Landscape Urban Tour
Featured City: Boise, Idaho
Featured Cultural Landscape: Minidoka National Historic Site, Jerome, ID
Distance From Boise: 130 miles, approximately 2 hours by car
“ A cultural landscape is a geographic area, including both cultural and natural resources and the wildlife or domestic animals therein, associated with an historic event, activity, or person, or exhibiting other cultural or aesthetic values.” NPS Cultural Landscape Program
Introduction: Minidoka National Historic Site contributes to a story of the single largest forced relocation in U.S. history, where thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans were made to leave their homes and move to camps across the western United States. This post will explore both the trials and triumphs of the internees incarcerated at the Minidoka Relocation Center during its three years of operation, 1942-1945.
A panorama view of the Minidoka War Relocation Authority center. This view, taken from the top of the water tower at the east end of the center, shows partially completed barracks. – Photographer: Stewart, Francis – Hunt, Idaho. 8/18/42: http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft3c6003zb/
Background: Anti-Japanese sentiments within the United States began in the 1880s when increasing numbers of Japanese people immigrated to the United States. The prejudice, based in large part on economic competition, overt racism, and fear, dramatically increased after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, manifesting in the belief that any person of Japanese descent was a possible spy for the Japanese government. This contributed to President Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, which forced over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living within the United States, called Nikkei, to leave their lives behind and move into one of ten isolated relocation centers, located in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah and Wyoming. One of those centers was located near Jerome, Idaho and was named Minidoka.
The Minidoka Relocation Center was managed by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) and between the years 1942 and 1945, the landscape was transformed from an undeveloped high desert to a community with utility lines, roads, administrative buildings, and 600 barracks. During its tenure, 13,000 Nikkei were incarcerated at the center.Today, Minidoka National Historic Site comprises 388.30 acres of the former 34,000-acre center.
Site map for Minidoka Relocation Center in 1945 (NPS, courtesy of the park website)
Cultural Traditions: While interned at Minidoka, many Nikkei constructed ornamental Japanese-style gardens around the camp, as was practiced at other centers across the country. These gardens embodied design aesthetics that were developed through centuries of practice and refinement in Japan. To understand this design practice more thoroughly, it is helpful to understand underlying principles of both Shintoism and Buddhism, as both influenced the evolution of Japanese-style garden design.
“Japanese Americans from Block 26 fashioned this garden and pond” ( ddr-densho-2-68) Courtesy of the Bain Family Collection. Retrieved from http://ddr.densho.org/ddr/densho/2/68/. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Within Shintoism, natural features such as weathered boulders and ancient trees embodied the spiritual power of ancestors. This belief manifested itself as fluency between nature and the constructed landscape, such that interior and exterior spaces were designed to complement each other. Buddhism in contrast, brought forth stylized construction techniques and ornate aesthetics. The result was a fusion of native Japanese aesthetics tending toward simplicity and naturalness with highly stylized and regimented design. Thus, in addition to fulfilling aesthetic needs, the traditional acts of designing, creating, and tending a garden were acts of spiritual practice.
At Minidoka, the Japanese-style ornamental gardens typically included any of the following features: strategically placed basalt rocks and boulders, mounds, a small architectural feature such as a bridge or temple, a path or stepping stones, a screening device such as a fence, transplanted and tended native plants, a collection of flowering plants and water features such as fish ponds. Today, only remnants of one of these gardens are extant in the form of rock-lined paths and boulders near the reconstructed Honor Roll Board.
The Honor Roll Board, located at the entrance to the site, was originally designed by Kenjiro Nomura and Kamekichi Tokita in 1943. This structure honored the 950 people from Minidoka who served in the military during WWII as a means to show their loyalty to the United States. As a backdrop to the Board, chief gardener Fujitaro Kubota designed a half-acre ornamental garden, which featured mounds, basalt boulders, stepping stones, trees lining its perimeter as well as flowers and shrubs planted throughout.
Historic and contemporary photo of the Honor Roll Board (NPS, courtesy of the park website ).
The Board and garden were destroyed after the camp’s closure in 1945; however, in 2010 the Friends of Minidoka received money from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program to reconstruct the Honor Roll Board. Today, the reconstructed Board and garden remnants at the entrance continue to represent the injustice, patriotism, wartime incarceration and conscientious resistance which shaped Minidoka.
Vegetation: When fully operational, the WRA intended for all relocation centers to be self-sustaining. Given the remote location of Minidoka, this mission was especially important, yet made challenging due to the dry climate. Beyond the residential blocks were two livestock farms and patches of agricultural fields. These fields were anywhere between three to 90 acres in size and produced an array of food crops. In 1944, the internees harvested 7,300,000 pounds of produce in the surrounding agricultural fields, making the camp completely self-sustainable.
Original WRA caption: “Harvesting the first corn crop at the Minidoka Relocation Center from fields which were covered with sagebrush last spring. Note the sleeves and the cloth and head cloth work by the evacuee woman on the left to protect her from the sun”. ( ddr-densho-2-68) Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration . Retrieved fromhttp://ddr.densho.org/ddr/densho/37/711/. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Today, there are many miles of agricultural land surrounding the historic site. This is a product of the center property being partitioned into small farms after it closed in 1945. In 1947, 43 of these small farms were allotted to war veterans, and in 1949 another 46 small farms were allotted. In 1952, the Farm-In-A-Day program further modified a portion of the property historically associated with the center.
Spatial Organization: The developed area of Minidoka was constructed on 950 acres, only three percent of the total WRA center land. The central core consisted of two residential areas, each one and a half miles wide and spanning three miles in length. There were 36 blocks total, each block contained 12 residential barracks, a dining hall, a recreation hall and one facility for lavatories and laundry. Open areas between blocks often supported the development of victory gardens, basketball, tennis and volleyball courts and baseball fields.
Minidoka swimming hole (NPS, courtesy of Park’s website).
By 1945, Minidoka had two elementary schools, a junior high, high school, two swimming holes, a hospital, churches, a theater, and a library. Additionally, the center included numerous places of recreation noted above and gardens (both victory gardens and private ornamental gardens). It was these places of recreation that enlivened Minidoka and for some internees, made their time there a little more bearable.
The “Center Field” restoration project: historic photo from 1945 and contemporary photo from 2015 (NPS, courtesy of Park’s website).
Minidoka National Historic Site contains several features that contribute to our understanding of the Minidoka Relocation Center during the period of significance, 1942-1945. These features include a reconstructed guard tower and two historic structures at the entrance, the reconstructed Honor Roll Board and garden remnants, a relocated barracks building and mess hall, warehouse, fire station, root cellar, and numerous building slabs and associated landscape features. In addition, two farm houses and several structures are located within the boundaries of the NPS-owned historic site, which postdate the camp’s closure. Some of these buildings are significant for their association with the Farm-In-A-Day Program that was developed on site in 1952. Today, visitors can learn about Minidoka’s rich history along a 1.6 mile interpretive walking trail, which highlights remnants of the camp and stories of Minidoka. Despite the loss of many of the buildings and structures on site, there remain many echoes of the past for anyone who cares to listen.
Do you have your own stories of cultural landscapes? We challenge you to find a cultural landscape that you can connect to–whether it be in your hometown or representative of your heritage, the journey to these special places might not be as long as you think.
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