"Life Interrupted" is a partnership between the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program and the Japanese American National Museum with major funding provided by the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation. The Project's mission was to research the experiences of Japanese Americans in World War II Arkansas, and educate the citizens of Arkansas and the nation about the two camps at Jerome and Rohwer. A set of educational materials is also available, with lesson plans for grades 4-12.
Installation views of the exhibitions at Little Rock have been posted by their designers, Quatrefoil.
Resources include a bibliography of the agency's holdings on "Japanese-American Relocation Camps in Arkansas, 1942-1945"; and a searchable database of photographs that includes images of the Rohwer camp memorial monuments.
Excerpt: "Arkansas was neither receptive to nor supportive of the Japanese Americans being incarcerated in the state. Local residents were often hostile to those imprisoned in the camps for reasons beyond the race of the internees. The camps often had amenities that were lacking in the poor, Delta towns that surrounded them: electricity, locally grown food, and more. During their period of confinement, many unfounded and malicious accusations of 'coddling,' food hoarding, labor strikes, and disloyalty were aimed at the camps by state political leaders."
This personal website, developed by Rocky Tsang in 1998 as part of the Arkansas Memory Project, incorporates archival and photographic materials from the University of Central Arkansas collections.
Excerpt: "The experiences of the POWs in Arkansas were far more agreeable than prisoners might expect, but the hostility shown to the Japanese Americans represented the failure of Arkansas and the nation to come to terms with the nation's multiculturalism. Few Americans and fewer Arkansans seemed to realize that the great majority of Japanese Americans were loyal citizens and that their ancestry was not a major factor in determining their loyalty."
Inventory of a small collection of photographs documenting the Japanese Relocation Camps at Rohwer and Jerome.
Jerome
J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, and R. Lord, "Chapter 7: Jerome Relocation Center". In: Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Publications in Anthropology 74, Western Archaeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, 1999.
"Jerome Relocation Center, Arkansas". In: Report to the President: Japanese-American Internment Sites Preservation. National Park Service, 2001.
Mrs. Boen was appointed as a teacher at the Jerome relocation center. The papers consist of a small amount of correspondence, school programs, memorabilia and photographs of the Relocation Center at Jerome, and two booklets describing the educational program of the Relocation Center at Topaz, Utah.
Russell E. Bearden, "Jerome Relocation Center". In: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture (updated July 17, 2006).
Includes bibliographic references.
Excerpt: "The constant movement of camp populations makes completely accurate statistics difficult; however, as of January 1943, with a population of 7,932 that was engaged predominantly in agricultural work before the war, thirty-three percent of the men and women in the Jerome Camp were aliens--fourteen percent over the age of sixty. Sixty-six percent were American citizens--thirty-nine percent under the age of nineteen. There were 2,483 school age children in the camp--a full thirty-one percent of the total population."
Rohwer
J. Burton, M. Farrell, F. Lord, and R. Lord, "Chapter 11: Rohwer Relocation Center". In: Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Publications in Anthropology 74. Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, 1999.
"Rohwer Relocation Center, Arkansas". In: Report to the President: Japanese-American Internment Sites Preservation. National Park Service, 2001.
"The Rohwer Relocation Center was constructed in 1942 on approximately 10,161 acres in Desha County southeastern Arkansas. The site is located about 110 miles southeast of Little Rock and about 27 miles north of the Jerome Relocation Center. Approximately 500 acres served as the central area of the relocation center and was home to most of the structures. The Relocation Center was in operation from September 18, 1942 until November 30, 1944. The maximum population was 8,475. Evacuees were from California. There were more than 620 buildings at the relocation center including buildings for evacuees, military police, staff, fire station, health care, and mess halls."
Russell E. Bearden, "Rohwer Relocation Center". In: The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture (updated Nov. 11, 2006).
Includes bibliographic references.
Excerpt: "Accurate population and age statistics were constantly changing due to the forced movement of the Japanese populations. Well over ninety percent of the adult Rohwer population of 8,475 had been involved in agriculture, commercial fishing, or businesses that centered on the distribution of agricultural products. Thirty-five percent of the camp’s population was Issei, ten percent of whom were over the age of sixty. Sixty-four percent were Nisei, with forty percent of those under the age of nineteen. There were 2,447 school age children in the camp—a full twenty-eight percent of the total population."
Erin Kromm Cain, "Rohwer". University of Arkansas Research Frontiers (Fall 2004).
"When University of Arkansas art professor John Newman was in college at the University of Kansas, he got a peek into what life was like in the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s. He didn't realize at the time just how close to home that part of history was."
Article describes Newman's introduction to the history of the camp at Rohwer through the artwork of his mentor, artist Roger Shimomura.
"The story of “Miss Jamison” and the education program in the prison camps at Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas provides a fresh new view of a Caucasian teacher who came to work with a “strange” group of students, but who was herself educated in the process. Through evidence from Jamison’s papers, contemporary documents, historical accounts, interviews with survivors and even from the students’ art work Miss Jamison preserved, Ziegler creates a perceptive account of the wartime ordeal of the more than 110,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of them American citizens, from a unique point of view."