Bringing History to Life Through Interpretive Exhibits
Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program: $500,000
Friends of Minidoka was awarded a $500,000 federal grant through the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Program to develop and install interpretive exhibits in the newly restored Root Cellar and Barrack. These exhibits will transform passive observation into active learning, fostering empathy, reflection, and a deeper understanding of the human consequences of injustice and the enduring importance of civil liberties.
Visitors will walk through recreated living spaces in the historic barrack and experience the realities of confinement firsthand. Standing in the cramped quarters where entire families lived, they will gain a deeper understanding of daily life at Minidoka. Each apartment will represent a chapter in the Minidoka story — from the uncertainty of arrival in 1942, to creating a sense of normalcy during incarceration, to the camp's closure and the postwar use of the barrack as migrant worker housing.
The root cellar will provide a complementary perspective, illustrating how incarcerated Japanese Americans transformed a harsh desert environment into a productive agricultural landscape while contributing labor to a community created by their own unjust confinement.
Diverse learning styles will be engaged through immersive environments and layered interpretation, including personal narratives, artifacts, maps, audio, and interactive digital media. Whether visitors learn best by seeing, listening, reading, or doing, they will encounter multiple pathways into learning the consequences of prejudice, wartime hysteria, and civil rights violations while learning lessons about resilience and democracy.
We are thrilled to be working with Quatrefoil Associates, an award winning exhibit design firm, for the root cellar and barrack exhibits. quatrefoil.com.
About the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program: The program provides federal funding through a competitive process to organizations and entities working to preserve historic Japanese American confinement sites and their history. Learn more at www.nps.gov/orgs/1379/jacs-grants.htm.
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