Project Links
University of Idaho
Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program » University of Idaho » Document List
Kooskia Internment Camp once held 256 internees during World War II and represented the U.S. government's first attempt to utilize Japanese American internees as a labor force for construction projects. Over the years, weather and isolation have contributed to severely deteriorating the site and leaving minimal remnants of the original structures. To uncover extant structures and landscape features associated with this camp, the University of Idaho will use their $16,456 award to administer preliminary archaeological testing, GIS work, and a public outreach program. The first phase of the archaeological surveying will be completed by the University's students, historians, and archaeologists as part of a field school. The objectives of the field school include a surface survey, shovel testing, auger probing, and GIS mapping of the Kooskia site. All archaeological survey data will be inputted into GIS software to generate a detailed map of the Kooskia historic structures. Visitors to the site, as well as U.S. Forest Service personnel, will use this map to explore the camp's landscape. To further promote the historic significance of this site, the proposal will organize outreach initiatives to share archaeological findings. The University plans on developing a website to advertise the archival resources and will invite stakeholders to a public archaeological day in the summer of 2010. Moreover, the proposed project will share their fieldwork findings to interested individuals, the Society for Historical Archaeology's annual conference in 2011, and to scholars at the University's campus. The goals of the archaeological research and the public outreach programs aspire to enlighten the public on the history of confinement at Kooskia by uncovering artifacts that explain how camp internees managed survival in such a remote environment.