On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 and subsequently approved the internment of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans. By their release in 1945, approximately 120,000 people (the majority of which were U.S. citizens) were incarcerated simply because of their heritage. In all there were ten internment camps (not including relocation centers and U.S. Department of Justice camps)-two of them located in Arkansas. For whatever reason, scholars have ignored the Arkansas camps, choosing instead to focus on the camps further west.

In September 2004, the Public History Program at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock will launch a multi-media project to educate the citizens of Arkansas and the six states surrounding Arkansas about the legacy of Jerome and Rohwer, the Arkansas camps, through a series of exhibits with complementary educational and interpretive programming based on scholarly research. The project will culminate in:

• Traveling exhibit focused on Jerome and Rohwer
• Publications that complement both the exhibit and symposium
• Symposium that discusses the experience of camp life in a national, regional, and local context
• Documentary that will provide an introduction to the exhibits and a longer version for television broadcast

Please check back for updates and important information.

The applications for the master teacher workshop in Los Angeles, CA (Summer 2003) are now available.

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