The Kooskia, Idaho, Japanese Internment Camp, 1943-1945

Immediately following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, numerous Japanese, German, and Italian aliens were arrested and detained on no specific grounds, without the due process guaranteed to them by the U.S. Constitution, and were sent to INS detention camps at Fort Missoula, Montana; Bismarck, North Dakota; and elsewhere. The INS camps were separate and distinct from the ten major camps under War Relocation Authority (WRA) supervision. The WRA camps, including one at Minidoka, in southern Idaho, housed some 120,000 American citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry who were unconstitutionally evacuated, relocated, and imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II.

Although there were a number of Justice Department internment camps throughout the United States during WWII, the Kooskia Internment Camp was unique because it was the only camp of its kind in the United States.  Its inmates had volunteered to go there from other camps, and received wages for their work.  A total of some 265 male Japanese aliens; 24 male and 3 female Caucasian civilian employees; 2 male internee doctors, one Italian and one German; and 1 male Japanese American interpreter occupied the Kooskia Internment Camp at various times between May 1943 and May 1945.  Although some of the internees held camp jobs, most of the men were construction workers for a portion of the present Highway 12 between Lewiston, Idaho, and Missoula, Montana, parallel to the wild and scenic Lochsa River.

The Japanese internees at the Kooskia camp came from Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, and Washington. They included  Reverend Hozen Seki, founder of the New York Buddhist Church; Toraichi Kono, former employee of Charlie Chaplin; and Japanese Latin Americans kidnapped from their respective countries, chiefly Peru, by U.S. government agencies. "Digging in the documents" has produced INS, Forest Service, Border Patrol, and University of Idaho photographs and other records. These, combined with internee and employee oral and written interviews, illuminate the internees' experiences, emphasizing the perspectives of the men detained at the Kooskia Internment Camp.

Wegars is completing a book manuscript on the Kooskia Internment Camp, tentatively titled "Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internees Build a Highway in the Wilderness." Based on a decade of grant-assisted historical research using archives, diaries, photographs, contemporary newspapers, and interviews with participants, "Imprisoned in Paradise" is a serious work of non-fiction that is both readable and well-documented. A university press is currently evaluating the manuscript.

Although two other groups are peripheral to the main narrative, so will not be fully discussed in the book, their exploits add background and interest to "Imprisoned in Paradise." One is the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp of "city slickers" from New York State. They inhabited the site while working on Forest Service projects for several months in 1933. Next, from mid-1935 until May 1943, the compound became the Canyon Creek Prison Camp holding convicts from the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, as well as local conscientious objectors. As with the later Japanese internees, the inmates worked on construction of the present U.S. Highway 12, then called the Lewis-Clark Highway. One prisoner, a member of the jackhammer crew, declared that the granite they drilled was "as hard as a district attorney's heart."

The Kooskia Internment Camp project was partially funded by an Idaho Humanities Council Research Fellowship and by a grant from the federal Civil Liberties Public Education Fund (CLPEF). The CLPEF was authorized by the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which awarded apologies and redress payments to citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry unconstitutionally evacuated, relocated, and interned during World War II. The Act also provided for the establishment of the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund, financing endeavors that inform the public about the internment in order to prevent the recurrence of any similar event. Wegars' report to the CLPEF is entitled, "A Real He-Man's Job:" Japanese Internees and the Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho, 1943-1945," emphasizing the perspective of the Kooskia internees. Although no more copies of that report are available, it has been excerpted for several publications, a booklet is available, and a slide lecture has been presented to numerous public groups.  Wegars also received a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP), a product of the California State Library. That project was Golden State Meets Gem State: Californians at Idaho's Kooskia Internment Camp, 1943-1945; some 82 of the Kooskia internees (31 percent) had ties to California.  In connection with that grant, slide presentations were given during early 2002 at a number of locations in California.

For further reading, Wegars' essay, “Japanese and Japanese Latin Americans at Idaho’s Kooskia Internment Camp,” appears in Guilt by Association: Essays on Japanese Settlement, Internment, and Relocation in the Rocky Mountain West, Mike Mackey, editor, pp. 145-183 (Powell, WY:  Western History Publications, 2001). A brief trailer for the documentary film Toraichi Kono: Living in Silence, about Kooskia internee Toraichi Kono, a former employee of movie comedian Charlie Chaplin, is at http://www.myspace.com/toraichikono.

Wegars is interested in communicating with former Kooskia Internment Camp internees and employees, or their descendants, in order to interview them. She is also eager to locate additional letters, diaries, photographs, or other documents relating to the Kooskia Internment Camp experience.  She would also enjoy hearing from any man, or descendants of any man, who was at CCC Camp F-38 or who was incarcerated at the Canyon Creek Prison Camp.

For more information, to schedule a talk, or to request a book proposal, please contact:

Priscilla Wegars

Kooskia Internment Camp Project

735 East Sixth Street

Moscow, Idaho 83843

(208) 882-7905;  pwegars@moscow.com

Click here for a list of California towns of origin or residence for Kooskia internees.

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