Park Champion Clarence Moriwaki

Clarence Moriwaki has spent a decade working to ensure that the legacy of 120,000 Japanese Americans--two-thirds of them U.S. citizens who were forcibly removed to isolated internment camps during World War II--will not be forgotten. As president of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Committee, he built local, regional, and national support to make the site of the former Eagledale Ferry Dock on Bainbridge Island (the location of the first exclusion of Japanese Americans on the west coast to internment camps) as an official national park unit and memorial site. His efforts paid off last year when Congress and the President approved the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Memorial, making it a satellite unit of Minidoka National Historic Site in Idaho. Phase 2 of the memorial project's four phases is underway, and Clarence was awarded NPCA's annual Marjory Stoneman Douglas Award for his personal efforts to protect and commemorate the site.

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Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• NPCA
• national parks
• ken burns