(Denver, CO) - The National Park Service is now accepting applications for grants to preserve and interpret the U.S. relocation camps and other sites where more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. This year’s deadline for applications is Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012. “The National Park Service is honored to help preserve through these grants the stories and historic sites of fellow Americans who endured a shameful chapter our nation must never forget,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis. “With the help of Congress, this important programcontinues to help preserve vital testimony – in words, images, scholarship and places – to the need to guard our constitutional rights against injustice, prejudice and fear.” This marks the fifth year in the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, which Congress established in 2006. Over the past four years, Congress has assigned nearly $9.7 million in grants to 83 projects in or involving 17 states and the District of Columbia. The president’s budget plan for fiscal year 2013 calls for $3 million more for the program. Japanese American Confinement Sites grants are awarded to eligible groups and bodies – non-profit organizations, educational institutions and state, local and tribal governments – for work to preserve confinement sites and their histories. The program goal is to preserve and explain the places where Japanese American men, women and children – most of them U.S. citizens – were relocated and held after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Congress has authorized that up to $38 million in grants can be awarded over the life of the program, with funds appropriated annually. Grant money can be used to identify, research, evaluate, interpret, protect, restore, repair and acquire historic internment sites. The goal is for present and future generations to learn of and gain inspiration from the sites and those who were held in them.

For more information contact Kara Miyagishima / phone: 303-969-2885