On this Day of Remembrance, a film clip from the Japanese American concentration camp at Jerome, AK that was lost for 75 years. @InternetArchive curator @footage saw this Kodachrome reel up for sale on EBay. He bought it & put it in our repository for safekeeping. #history pic.twitter.com/UELXdRb5e8
— Internet Archive (@internetarchive) February 20, 2021
Friday was the Day of Remembrance, marking Feb. 19, 1942, when President Roosevelt signed the executive order authorizing the incarceration of Japanese Americans in internment camps, including two in Arkansas.
The day was marked this year by the discovery and preservation of recently discovered film from Arkansas of what many now refer to as concentration camps. It’s believed to have been taken by an employee of the internment camp in Jerome. (The original Tweet erroneously used the abbreviation for Alaska, rather than Arkansas.)
As a Smithsonian program noted Friday, the U.S. is not beyond racism almost 80 years later.
More from the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History on the Jerome camp. Also information about a museum on the internment camps in McGehee.
Photo below is of camp children from the Arkansas State Archives, courtesy of the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History.