Japanese-Americans Fight to Preserve Wartime Internment Camps

As the last of those who remember camp life reach their 70s and 80s, their efforts to commemorate their experience have expanded: Former internees are determined not just to preserve the stories of internment; they also are trying to save the camps themselves. In 2006, President Bush signed a bill authorizing up to $38 million for a grant program to preserve the camps. But nearly two years later, swamped in election year politics, the funds have yet to be appropriated. The delay worries internees and historians alike. Soon, says Lane Hirabayashi, a professor of Asian-American studies at ucla, "these physical sites are all we'll have left to remind us."