Public Input
One lesson from the National Park Service's public input meeting on the future Tule Lake internment center memorial: Words matter.
Calling sites like Tule Lake "camps" is, of course, an outrage. But even "internment camps" isn't accurate; people in internment are charged with crimes and given trials. Absent historical hindsight, Roosevelt himself had no trouble with the term "concentration camps," but that comes with a little bit of baggage.
"Incarceration" — or worse — more accurately describes the experience of Japanese Americans during the war. Seventy years of linguistic whitewash has abetted the obfuscation of this grim fact for at least two successive generations. And lest this become just history in a dead museum, check out the billboard facing Rainier Ave. outside the window: "Stop a terrorist. Save lives."
Public Input
One lesson from the National Park Service's public input meeting on the future Tule Lake internment center memorial: Words matter.
Calling sites like Tule Lake "camps" is, of course, an outrage. But even "internment camps" isn't accurate; people in internment are charged with crimes and given trials. Absent historical hindsight, Roosevelt himself had no trouble with the term "concentration camps," but that comes with a little bit of baggage.
"Incarceration" — or worse — more accurately describes the experience of Japanese Americans during the war. Seventy years of linguistic whitewash has abetted the obfuscation of this grim fact for at least two successive generations. And lest this become just history in a dead museum, check out the billboard facing Rainier Ave. outside the window: "Stop a terrorist. Save lives."