Hundreds Travel To South Arkansas To Visit Internment Camps

More than 800 Japanese-Americans traveled from Little Rock to the southeastern town of Rohwer yesterday to see the remnants of the town`s former World War Two internment camps. The elderly Asaki couple from Pasadena, Maryland, brought two red and green folded paper cranes and placed them on the graves at a cemetery in the midst of blooming cotton. Mister Asaki said the cranes are symbolic of long life before he started crying. The visit to Rohwer was the last day of the four-day Life Interrupted National Conference, which began in Little Rock on Thursday. The conference was organized to help chronicle the untold story of the Arkansas camps at Rohwer and Jerome. While other camps have held reunions and worked to preserve the history of the era for decades, the story of the Arkansas camps had been largely neglected until recently. Most signs of the former camps are gone, the barracks that once housed thousands of families have long since been torn down and the land taken over for cotton fields. The 24 graves of elderly and infants who died in the camp and two monuments erected by the detainees are all that remain. One monument lists 30 men who died in combat after joining the U.S. Army while at the camp. More than 800 former detainees and their family members, many of them stooped with age, took the bus trips to Rohwer and Jerome yesterday. They left flowers on graves and used paper and pencils to capture images of the engraved names. They took pictures with long lost friends while sharing hugs and tears.