Kilmer Meets with Local Japanese American Survivors of Internment Camps at Bainbridge Island Memorial
Bainbridge Island, WA – Representative Derek Kilmer (WA-06) met with local Japanese American survivors of World War II internment camps at the Bainbridge Island memorial. Kilmer was joined at the site by Johnpaul Jones, the architect who designed the memorial and recently received a National Humanities Medal from President Obama.
“I was honored to meet today with proud American citizens who lived through a troubling moment in our nation’s history,” said Kilmer. “Starting in 1942, under the cloak of wartime and on places like Bainbridge Island, thousands of Japanese Americans were forced from their homes. Sites like the Bainbridge memorial remind us of this trying time in our nation’s history and its impact on some of our neighbors. This visit reinforces why it’s important to pass the bill I’ve worked on with folks on Bainbridge to help honor this community and underscore for visitors that this is the first place in the country where Japanese Americans were forcibly excluded from their community.”
Kilmer discussed his legislation to officially recognize a new name for the Bainbridge Island memorial honoring Japanese Americans forced from their homes during World War II. The bill, which recently passed out of the House Natural Resources Committee, ensures the site is properly recognized as the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial.
During the visit, Japanese Americans who lived through the relocation talked about their experience and show Kilmer where their names are on the memorial. Members of the Bainbridge Island City Council, the Bainbridge Island Historical Society, and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community and the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association joined the tour as well.
Bainbridge Island organizations – including the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community and the Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association – and residents pushed for the renaming of the National Historic Site, previously referenced in federal law as the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Memorial, to better reflect the history it commemorates. Rep. Kilmer worked closely with stakeholders and the National Park Service to clarify how to appropriately change the name and to ensure that the new name would be fully recognized in federal law.
The memorial is located at the former Eagledale ferry dock. It is the only national memorial to the internment of Japanese Americans not located at an incarceration site.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order allowing Japanese Americans to be excluded from certain areas considered important to national security. Bainbridge Island became the first place to be deemed an “exclusion zone” by the United States government and 227 Bainbridge Island Japanese Americans were forced to leave, boarding a ferry at Eagledale to begin a journey that would end in internment camps.
Residents of the island used the local paper, the Bainbridge Review, to stay in touch with those who were interned. The paper’s publishers, Walt and Milly Woodward, openly opposed the removal of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, making them one of the only West Coast newspaper publishers to oppose the law.
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