WORLD WAR II MINIDOKA INCARCERATION CAMP GARDENS: EVIDENCE OF LOYALTY TO THE UNITED STATES OR REBELLING AGAINST THEIR INCARCERATION

Abstract

Following the fatal attack on Pearl Harbor in February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. Executive Order 9066 authorized the War Department to “prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons [of Japanese ancestry] may be excluded” (Roosevelt 1942). Over 110,000 Japanese immigrants, Issei, and second-generation Japanese Americans, Nisei, were removed from their homes and incarcerated at isolated relocation centers located in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Utah, and Wyoming (Burton 2005; Burton et al. 1999; Burton and Farrell 2001). One of these locations was the Minidoka Relocation Center, located in south central Idaho in Jerome County and is the focus of my thesis. The two types of gardens that I researched were Japanese-style ornamental gardens and the Western-style victory gardens planted and maintained by the incarcerees. Using archaeological evidence, historic photographs, oral histories, the diary from Arthur Kleinkopf (the education superintendent at Minidoka) and comparing typical Japanese-Style and Western-Style garden designs, I will discuss what the data reveals about the garden design at the Minidoka Incarceration Camp. Despite their unjust incarceration and the policy of forced Americanization within the Minidoka Incarceration Camp, were the incarcerees compliant or were they politically resisting this incarceration through their gardens?