December 24, 2022

Bainbridge Island, WA – The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association commends Congress for passing a 2023 spending bill that includes the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Act and the Japanese American World War II History Network Act.

Named after the late Norman Mineta who was incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Wyoming as a child, the Mineta Act dedicates $80 million in future funding “To provide competitive grants for the promotion of Japanese American confinement education as a means to understand the importance of democratic principles, use and abuse of power, and to raise awareness about the importance of cultural tolerance toward Japanese Americans…”

The Japanese American History Network Act authorizes the National Park Service to “coordinate federal and nonfederal activities that commemorate, honor, and interpret the history of Japanese Americans during World War II,” according to the Senate report on the bill.

The Mineta Act authorizes $10 million in grants to qualifying institutions for educational programs about the Japanese American incarceration in which more than 120,000 people—two-thirds of them U.S. citizens—were imprisoned in a series of concentration camps around the country.

BIJAEMA extends its thanks to the Washington delegation—Rep. Suzan Del Bene, Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Derek Kilmer, Rep. Rick Larsen, Rep. Adam Smith, and Rep. Marilyn Strickland—for their co-sponsorship of the Mineta Act as well as their votes, along with Rep. Kim Schrier, to pass the Consolidated Appropriations Act. Washington Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray were likewise critical to the bill’s passage.

The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial preserves the site where the first group of West Coast Japanese Americans were removed from their homes and unjustly incarcerated in the Manzanar and Minidoka relocation centers during WWII. The Memorial honors their experience and provides education to the community in an effort to ensure this type of injustice will never happen again. The Memorial is located at 4192 Eagle Harbor Dr NE on Bainbridge Island. For more information, call 360-386-2114 or email info@bijaema.org.