This San Francisco Chronicle article is a few weeks old, but it's an interesting look (with photos and video) at Camp Tule Lake, where 18,000 Japanese Americans and transplants from Japan -- as well as 800 German officers and 150 Italian prisoners of war -- were incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II: WWII internment camps part of park system.
In December, thanks in part to the work of camp survivors and their families, Tule Lake was named a national park as part of the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument, freeing federal funds for preservation.
After decades of rotting and decay, the dark history of the Tule Lake prison camps will soon be memorialized with a visitors' center, tours, website and other tools intended to explain how thousands of Americans were imprisoned there. It seems to me, in times like these, such lessons are more important than ever.
