10 Camps, 10 Stories: Beyond the Barbed Wire

The Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site in Hyde Park, New York, usually tells the story of Roosevelt's achievements. It also chose to look at his mistakes, and perhaps the worst of his presidency was Executive Order 9066, under which Japanese Americans were incarcerated in camps during World War II. The park's video series "10 Camps, 10 Stories: Beyond the Barbed Wire" looks past the historical facts to the human side of that story.

How it began

Park Ranger Kevin Oldenburg conceived the series after a seminar in Utah in November 2022, which included a visit to the site of the Topaz camp. He saw paths of stones that incarcerated people had carefully laid to make the place feel more like their own, weathered trinkets on the ground, and the foundations of the buildings that housed them. That history made the desolate landscape human, and he wanted to honour the people unjustly held there.

One person was chosen from each of the ten camps. With his colleagues, Oldenburg built videos from historic photographs, film footage and family members' oral histories, and Park Ranger Will Simone edited and finished the twelve videos.

The series

A new story came out each month from February to December 2023. The last was released on December 10, Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the adoption in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Eleanor Roosevelt helped draft; 2023 was its 75th anniversary. The park hopes the stories lead people to see Executive Order 9066 differently, and to think of the lives it changed forever.

The videos are on the park's YouTube channel:

• Introduction
• 1: Kiyoshi Muranaga, Amache
• 2: Kenichi Zenimura, Gila River
• 3: Toyo Miyatake, Manzanar
• 4: Ruth Asawa, Rohwer
• 5: George Yoshinaga, Heart Mountain
• 6: Mary Tsukamoto, Jerome
• 7: Mine Okubo, Topaz
• 8: George Fujii, Poston
• 9: Jimi Yamaichi, Tule Lake
• 10: Henry Miyatake, Minidoka
• Conclusion

Sources

• National Park Service, Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, "10 Camps, 10 Stories: 'Beyond the Barbed Wire'." https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/beyondthebarbedwire.htm
• Corrected: "Rowher" to "Rohwer".