Inslee launches memorial bill

Published 1:00 pm Wednesday, July 19, 2006

For thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II, the dusty hills of Eden were anything but paradise.

There, near a small Idaho town with an unlikely name, some 7,000 American citizens of Japanese descent were interned.

The first wave of eventual internees pushed off from present-day Pritchard Park en route to California amd eventually the Minidoka internment camp, just north of Eden, under the compulsion of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s executive order 9066.

Now, more than 60 years later, the link between the two points may once again adjoin, this time in tribute to those who endured.

“This is a national story in addition to being very important to the community and our neighbors on Bainbridge who were lost to internment,” said Congressman Jay Inslee (D-1st District) of Bainbridge Island. “It bodes well to not forget what fear can do to a great nation.”

To that end, Inslee and Congressman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) filed legislation in the House on Monday that would add an island memorial to the national park system, honoring the first Japanese Americans sent to World War II internment camps.

The bill would make the memorial now under construction at the former dock site in Pritchard Park a “satellite site” of the monument at Minidoka, which was established in 2001 as one of two internment camps now designated as national parks.

Inslee, along with U.S. Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, spurred a study by the U.S. Department of the Interior three years ago to include the Eagledale memorial in the national park system based on its significance to both local and national history.

Because many former detainees are now elderly, Inslee has stressed that pushing the legislation through quickly is vital.

“The last remaining members of the first generation internees are aging,” he said. “They’re coming back to the community and we want to honor them.”

In 1943, following relocation to California a year earlier, 227 Bainbridge internees were transferred to Minidoka.

The memorial broke ground last May following several years of fundraising in which $2 million of the $5 million needed for the project had already been raised. Dubbed Nidoto Nai Yoni, or “let it not happen again,” it has received both state and private funding along the way.

Before the House can vote on the bill, it must be approved by a federal resources panel. A companion bill has not yet been offered in the U.S. Senate. Inslee said it was conceivable the bill could come to vote this year.

“There’s reason for confidence,” he said. “There are no guarantees, but we’ll try our hard