Japanese American Wartime Incarceration Sites

The Seeing Memory Project is focused on five wartime Japanese American detention sites. Using digital mapping and storytelling tools in combination with community engaged and archival research methods, our project aims to make visible the layers of history present at these five sites. Enter the archives below.

Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration.

Landscapes of Japanese American Incarceration.

About the Archives

During World War II, these sites were prisons for Japanese Americans, part of a network of race-based incarceration that spread across the continent and the territories of Alaska and Hawai’i. Before the U.S. government turned the sites into prisons, the land held histories of Indigenous sovereignty, removal, and resilience. Today, the foundations of prison barracks are now campgrounds, active military bases, hiking trails, and soccer fields. Even so, much remains, if we can learn where and how to look.

Enter the Archives below to “visit” the sites and learn more about the distinct and often dissonant histories of each.

Enter the archives

  • Mountain landscape with housing structures in the valley

    Catalina Federal Honor Camp

    Tucson, AZ

    Go to Site
  • Four Japanese American children stand in front of wooden structure carrying baskets and wearing formal attire

    Baca Camp

    Lincoln, New Mexico

    Go to Site
  • Sign at entrance of camp in Kooskia that reads "US Department of Justice: Kooskia Internment Camp Reservation. For next 3 miles. No Admission except on official business."

    Kooskia

    Kooskia, Idaho

    Go to Site
  • Tent structures on wooden platform surrounded by snow.

    Fort Richardson

    Anchorage, AK

    Forthcoming

  • People lined up next to a field with a structure behind them that says Fort Missoulaand a mountain in the background

    Fort Missoula

    Missoula, MT

    Forthcoming

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Seeing Memory, 2022.