University of Idaho Releases First Public Digital Repository of Archaeology from American WWII Internment Camps

From the U. of Idaho:

An online database – the first of its kind – is allowing visitors the chance to explore history in a digitally hands-on way. Through a collaboration between the Northwest Knowledge Network and the UI Library, University of Idaho professor Stacey Camp has created a digital repository of archaeological items discovered from the World War II internment camp in Kooskia, Idaho.

Camp, an associate professor of anthropology and director of the Alfred W. Bowers Laboratory of Anthropology, was awarded a grant from the Idaho Humanities Council to spend the last year creating the online system. Utilizing anthropology students from UI’s College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, Camp and her team cataloged approximately 400 items and entered detailed information about these items in the database.
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The Kooskia Internment Camp imprisoned a predominantly Japanese immigrant population between 1943 and 1945. Camp led excavations with teams of University of Idaho students at the site in 2010 and 2013, and her work was featured in international media including Fuji News, Al Jazeera America, and the Huffington Post.
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“This database will give scholars and the public immediate access to archaeological data as it is being digitized and cataloged,” Camp said. “It will allow us to see how goods and resources, such as medicine, food and clothing, were distributed across different types of World War II incarceration facilities. By incorporating additional data sets from other World War II internment camps, we hope to answer questions about these people’s experiences, such as if all prisoners were treated equally, or were certain types of prisoners given better goods and resources?”

Read the Complete Launch Announcement
Direct to Internment Archaeology Website/Database

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