Archaeologists at the University of Hawaii West Oahu have begununearthinga long - forgotten token from a non-white period of American history .
The Honouliuli internment and POW cantonment was open for three years . In that time it consider the detention of more than 1000 Japanese - American citizen and thousands of prisoners of war .
UH archaeologist William Belcher is leading the excavations . He says that after the camp was bulldozed in 1946 , it seemed to vanish from public consciousness . “ When I was in elementary schoolhouse , I never even heard that this had occurred , ” he told NBC News . “ We never studied this in history or talked about it . ”
Thanks in part to former President Obama , that ’s beginning to interchange . Obama , who was bear and rear in Hawaii , designatedthe camp a interior repository in 2015 . Now Belcher and his students are digging in to help empty the site of seven decades ’ Charles Frederick Worth of globe , grass , shrubs , and junk .
It ’s a difficult task made even concentrated by the landscape . The refugee camp is hidden inside a steep gulch that Japanese - American internees cry " Jigoku Dani , " or " Hell Valley . " It ’s out of reach by public roads and get very , very live during the daylight . Belcher and his students are clearing the site with machetes . " The basic applied science is to walk in a systematic mode across the entire landscape , " he tell NBC News .
The impounding situation during World War II looked unlike in Hawaii than it did in California or Washington United States Department of State . Forty percentage of Hawaiian citizen were of Japanese blood line , and many of them were plantation doer . To protect the islands ’ plantation economy , the government resolve to restrain some , but not all , citizens within the clique ’s crowded enclosures and barbed - telegram fences .
In naming the site anational memorial , Senator Mazie HironotoldNBC News she hoped that recognizing our land ’s troubled history might prevent us from commit similar barbarousness in the future .
" The stories of those detained at Honouliuli and impounding sites like it across the state are sobering reminder of how even leaders of the greatest nation on Earth can succumb to revere and mistrust and perpetuate peachy injustice , " Hirono say .
