Commemorating the Day of Remembrance
The exhibit – honoring the citizens incarcerated at Minidoka during WWII – runs Tuesday, February 13, 2024, through Saturday, February 24, 2024.
The Wood River Museum in Ketchum invites the community to explore a new pop-up exhibit, Only What We Could Carry, to honor the annual Day of Remembrance, which commemorates the signing of Executive Order 9066 February 19, 1942. The order enabled the U.S. Army to exclude, forcibly remove, and unjustly incarcerate over 125,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese Nationals during the Second World War.
The interactive exhibit features four suitcases, three of which include items that prisoners might have taken with them, ranging from clothing to canned goods. The fourth suitcase invites you to consider what items you might take, should you be forcibly removed from your home and taken to what the National Park Service terms, “an American Concentration Camp.”
The exhibit, Only What We Could Carry opens on Tuesday, February 13 and runs through Saturday, February 24. The Wood River Museum is located at 580 Fourth Street East in Ketchum. Entry to the Museum is FREE and open Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
“There is power in remembering the history and legacy of Japanese American incarceration during WWII,” says Brigid Miller, Community Engagement Manager at the Wood River Museum of History and Culture. “It is a period of U.S. history that should never be forgotten, and one that is relevant to contemporary issues in our country and beyond.”
Here in central Idaho, more than 13,000 Japanese Americans were “interned” (read: imprisoned) at the Minidoka Concentration Camp, in Hunt, just 82 miles south of Ketchum. One such individual was Mitsuru Takahashi, who was forcibly removed from his home in Seattle to Minidoka, while still in high school, in 1942. The Wood River Museum commemorates Takahashi and all the Minidoka prisoners as part of their ongoing exhibit, How in the World Did You Get to Sun Valley?, a set of eleven “arrival stories” of individuals who came to the Wood River Valley area.
The Wood River Museum of History and Culture is located at 580 Fourth Street East in Ketchum. Entry to the Museum is FREE and open Tuesday-Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
