Valor in the Pacific

WW II Valor in the Pacific National Monument has 3 separate sites.  Nearly 2 million people a year visit the USS Arizona Memorial (Pearl Harbor) in Hawaii.  The other 2 sites - Tule Lake, CA and Kiska Island, AK - are virtually unknown and rarely visited.

We stopped briefly in Tule Lake this summer, not much to see there yet, a work in progress.  Before WW II, Tule Lake had a large Civilian Conservation Corp camp.  When the war started, it was rapidly expanded and converted to a Japanese-American internment camp that held 20,000 people, the largest of 10 internment camps that held a total of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

The picture below, taken when all the barracks were still present, could have been taken of Dachau or Auschwitz.  Many of these buildings were moved and converted into homes after the war; we saw several as we drove through town.

The internees were given 3 days notice before they were moved, were forced to abandon their homes, businesses and belongings, were allowed to take only 1 suitcase to the internment camps, where they were destined to stay for 2.5 years.

These camps were a flagrant act of bigotry and a violation of civil rights.  In my view, the Tule Lake site shouldn't be included with the other 2 sites and should be named more appropriately.  Of valor there was naught.  Of shame there was abundance.