NPS Announces $3 Million in JA Confinement Site Grants

Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County. (Photo courtesy: Manzanar NHS/Katsumi Taniguchi)

WASHINGTON – The National Park Service is now accepting applications for $3 million in grants to support the preservation of places where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II.

“Through these grants, the National Park Service is giving communities and partners a voice in telling the difficult story of Japanese American confinement during World War II,” NPS Director Jonathan B. Jarvis said. “By doing so we honor those who endured incarceration and ensure that a new generation of Americans can learn from this tragic episode in our history.”

Congress established the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program in 2006 to preserve and explain the places where Japanese American men, women, and children – most of them U.S. citizens – were incarcerated after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. JACS grants are awarded to eligible groups and entities, including non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and state, local, and tribal governments, for work to preserve confinement sites and their histories.

In establishing the program, Congress authorized up to $38 million in grants that can be awarded over the life of the program, with funds appropriated annually. To date, the program has awarded more than $21 million in grants to 163 projects involving 20 states and the District of Columbia.

In fiscal year 2016, the National Park Service distributed 15 grants totaling more than $2.8 million. The president’s budget for fiscal year 2017 seeks $3 million for the next round of program grants.

Grants may be used for a variety of efforts, including the design and construction of interpretive centers, trails, wayside exhibits, and other facilities, oral histories and site-history research, school curricula, and purchase of non-federal land at authorized sites.

The program requires applicants to raise project funds from other sources to “match” the grant money, which is awarded after a competitive review of project proposals. Successful grantees must match $1 in non-federal funds or “in-kind” contributions to every $2 they receive in federal money. Matching funds can be raised and spent during the grant period and do not have to be “in the bank” when a group applies for a grant. Applicants may receive up to two grants a year.

More than 60 historic sites are eligible for grant-funded work. They include the 10 War Relocation Authority centers that were established in 1942 in seven states: Granada (Amache) in Colorado; Gila River and Poston in Arizona; Heart Mountain in Wyoming; Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas; Manzanar and Tule Lake in California; Minidoka in Idaho; and Topaz in Utah. Also included are more than 40 other sites, including “assembly centers” and U.S. Army and Department of Justice detention and internment facilities.

The deadline for applications is Tuesday, Nov. 1 (5 p.m., MST).

More information, including 2017 application materials and lists of the program’s most recent awards, is available on the grant program website: https://www.nps.gov/jacs/