Jay Inslee: Washington's 1st Congressional District
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Pritchard Park
Bipartisan coalition files bill to honor internees
17 July 2006
U.S. Reps. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) filed legislation in the House that would include a Bainbridge Island, Wash., memorial honoring the first Japanese Americans sent to World War II internment camps in the national park system.
Their bill would codify into law the results of a Department of the Interior study released this May by making a memorial at the former Eagledale Ferry Dock a satellite site of an existing monument in Jerome County, Idaho.
Inslee, who led efforts in the House to commission and fund the Interior Department study and called for its prompt completion this March, hails from Bainbridge Island; Simpson’s district includes Minidoka Internment National Monument, one of two U.S. internment camps that now have national-park designation.
“Eagledale Ferry Dock belongs in the lexicon of historic sites designated as national parks and preserved for future generations because Bainbridge Island residents bookend a chapter in American history that needs to be retold with one goal: that fear should never drive us to such acts again. Our Bainbridge neighbors were the first group of Japanese Americans to be interned and among the last to return,” said Inslee, a member of the House Resources Committee, which has jurisdiction over national parks. “With the importance of the site, advancing age of surviving internees and endorsement of both members whose districts are directly impacted by the legislation, we have a strong case for congressional action on our bill.”
“Part of recording history, means recording all of history,” added Simpson, who serves as vice chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment, which funds U.S. national parks, among other things. “We need to add Bainbridge Island to the National Park System so we can pay tribute and remember the Japanese Americans who were sent to those interment camps.”
Located on Bainbridge Island, a short ferry ride from Seattle, the now defunct Eagledale Ferry Dock was the site from which the first 227 internees in the nation were forcibly removed from their homes and communities under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 and Civilian Exclusion Order No. 1. From Bainbridge Island, they were taken to the Manzanar Relocation Center in California. In 1943, they were transferred to the Minidoka Relocation Center.
This May, several years of fundraising and planning culminated in the groundbreaking and first phase of construction of a memorial at the former Eagledale Ferry Dock and in five acres of Joel Pritchard Park. Called Nidoto Nai Yoni, or "let it not happen again," $2 million of the $5 million project has been raised so far, with funding coming from private donors and the state of Washington.
"We commend Jay Inslee and Mike Simpson for their outstanding bipartisan leadership to add the Eagledale Ferry Dock site to the National Park System, as part of the Minidoka Internment National Monument," said Dan Sakura, director of government relations at The Conservation Fund. "The addition of this important site will help to preserve the history of the Japanese American community on Bainbridge Island and provide a lasting educational resource for Kitsap County, the Northwest and the nation."
The Inslee-Simpson bill must be approved by the resources panel before it can come to a vote on the House floor. A companion bill has not yet been offered in the Senate.