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National Park Service Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium Aims to Teach, Heal, Preserve Ask Hanako Wakatsuki why the annual Minidoka Civil Liberties Symposium - sponsored by Friends of Minidoka, the College of Southern Idaho, and Minidoka National Historic Site - is important and she'll tell you about the day a professor asked her about Minidoka and she didn't know what he was talking about. "I had to go and Google it," she says of the World War II relocation center in southcentral Idaho. "I didn't learn about it," she recalls, even though she grew up in Idaho and attended Idaho public schools. As chair of the non-profit Friends After the Grateful Crane Ensemble's performance of their play The Betrayed, performers of Minidoka, Wakatsuki now helps addressed questions from the audience. Left to right, Soji Kashiwagi, Mary Gruenewald, plan the symposium. For the past six and Hiroshi Kashiwagi. Photo courtesy: Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee years, the symposium has been held in conjunction with the annual Minidoka experience soon will be a thing of the past," Robert Sims, Pilgrimage. This year's pilgrimage began on June 30 in emeritus professor of history at Boise State University, Seattle and Portland and ended on July 3 at Minidoka. said of the lack of teaching materials on the internment The 2011 symposium, financed with the help of a $20,000 when Wakatsuki was a schoolgirl. "There's been a lot Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant, was titled of progress." Sims opened the 2011 symposium with a "Civil Liberties and War: Patriotism, Honor & Sacrifice." presentation on the military contributions of Japanese Americans in World War II. Another guest speaker was David Adler ofIdaho State University, who specializes in constitutional law. Also presenting was Larry Matsuda, who was born in Minidoka and who read from his poetry collection, A Cold Wind in Idaho. J. Todd Moye of the University of North Texas compared the experience of Minidoka's World War II veterans with the Tuskegee Airmen. Attendees also examined two films and a play, The Betrayed, presented by the Grateful Crane Ensemble. Following the symposium, a caravan of buses and cars traveled the remaining 20 miles of the pilgrimage to Minidoka - or the Hunt Camp, as locals call it - where nearly 9,500 Japanese Americans were interned from August 1942 to October 1945. Nearly 300 people attended the symposium held June 30-July 1 at the College of Southern Idaho. "Hanako's "It's important history and very emotional," said Russ Tremayne, associate professor of history at the College of Southern Idaho. Tremayne, who has been involved in planning the symposium since its beginning, emphasized its role in "trying to remedy what was left out of the history books." Frank Abe showed his documentary, Conscience and the Constitution, at the 2011 Civil Liberties Symposium. Photo courtesy: Minidoka Pilgrimage Committee 18