Minidoka CloseUp: An Interactive Digital Mapping Project
National Park Foundation Innovation Grant: $150,000
A National Park Foundation Innovation Grant will support Minidoka CloseUp, an interactive digital mapping project led by Friends of Minidoka in partnership with Minidoka National Historic Site, Densho, and the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial.
Minidoka CloseUp will digitally map the historic camp’s residential blocks, barracks, and individual living units. By bringing together historical records, residential information, archival photographs, and maps, the project will help visitors connect individual names and families to the places where they lived while incarcerated.
More than 13,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated at Minidoka. Today, few original structures remain to convey the scale of the camp or the realities of daily life. Through an interactive online platform, users will be able to search for individuals and families by name, explore residential locations, and better understand the community that existed within the camp. The digital map will also be available through interactive exhibits at Minidoka’s Visitor Center and a kiosk at the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Visitor Center, extending access to this history across different settings and audiences.
The project builds on Manzanar CloseUp, a digital mapping initiative developed by Densho that connects historical records to the physical landscape of the Manzanar incarceration site. By adapting this approach for Minidoka and exploring exhibit formats suited to different visitor center spaces, the partnership aims to make this technology accessible to a wider range of institutions, including sites with limited space and resources.
In addition to helping descendants connect with family histories, Minidoka CloseUp will offer educators, students, researchers, and the public new ways to explore the history of incarceration online and at Minidoka. The project also aims to establish a replicable framework for other Japanese American confinement sites and historic sites.
The $150,000 grant will fund data aggregation, digital map development, and interactive exhibit displays. An initial soft online launch is planned for spring 2027, followed by visitor testing and exhibit development.
About the National Park Foundation: The National Park Foundation works to protect wildlife and park lands, preserve history and culture, educate and engage youth, and connect people everywhere to the wonder of parks. Learn more about the Innovation Grant Program and the 2026 cohort here.
About Densho: Densho is a community-based public history organization whose mission is to preserve and share history of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans to promote equity and justice today. Founded in 1996, Densho is committed to making the stories of the people who lived through this critical event accessible and meaningful for current and future generations. Its public websites offer free historical and educational resources, and the Densho Digital Repository includes more than 1,200 oral histories and over 150,000 photos, letters, records, and other archival items. Learn more at Densho.org.
About Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association:
The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association (BIJAEMA) preserves and shares the history of the Japanese American community, honors the resilience of those who endured incarceration during World War II, celebrates the neighbors
who stood by them, promotes understanding of civil liberties and constitutional rights for all
Americans, and carries forward the Memorial’s guiding message, Nidoto Nai Yoni — “Let It Not Happen Again.” Learn more at BIJAEMA.org.
Comments