For many, the period of
Japanese American internment (1942-1945) during World War II is an event that
is not closely associated with the Arkansas Delta, however southeast Arkansas
was host to two internment camps: Rohwer and Jerome. In an effort to not lose
the story of what occurred during this time, a coalition Arkansas organizations
formed to educate the public about this significant event in American and
Arkansas history.
In 2016, the Arkansas State Archives joined Rohwer
Reconstructed: Interpreting Place Through Experience, a multi-phase
collaborative project created by the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies
(CAST). The project began in 2013 as a way to build an online resource for researchers
on Japanese American internment in the Rohwer camp, where nearly 12,000 people lived.
According to the Rohwer Reconstructed website, the goal of the project is to tell an “abridged” story of
the camp through documents, maps and visualizations presented in a technological
framework.
Along with the Archives,
the project includes Center for Applied Spatial Technologies, Arkansas State
University, UA Fayetteville Special Collections, Central Arkansas Library
System Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History
and Culture and the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum of McGehee, with
funding from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service and
Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.
Currently, about a third of the Rohwer Reconstructed’s materials
come from the Archives’ collection, which include photographs, government
documents, official correspondence, letters, personal effects and newspaper
articles.
Mary Dunn, the archival manager for technology and access, manages
the Archives’ efforts for the project, with the majority of work done by Archival Assistant Crystal Shurley,
Project Archivist Harry Lah and former Project Archivist Danielle Butler.
Dunn and Shurley have also had opportunities to share the Archives’ work and
findings to the public, presenting at the 2017 Delta Symposium and the 2017
Connecting to Heritage Studies Consortium, both in Jonesboro, and in this past
April’s Arkansas Historical Association Annual Conference in Fort Smith.
This August, Dunn and Lah will
present to a national audience at the Council of State Archivists, Society of
American Archivists, and National Association of Government Archives and
Records Administrators Joint Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
We will continue to update the public on the progress of the
Archives’ work with Rohwer Reconstructed and with Dunn’s upcoming conference in
D.C.
