City Club’s Hidden Histories: Minidoka & the Japanese American Experience

City Club of Boise’s Hidden Histories explores the history of nonwhite populations in Idaho. While demographically Idaho is predominantly white, the telling of Idaho’s history is rife with historical omissions of indigenous people and nonwhite settlers. Hidden Histories: The Japanese American Experience and Minidoka, examines the impact of Executive Order 9066, which led to the forced removal of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast, 13,000 of which were incarcerated in a concentration camp in the southern Idaho desert during WWII. City Club is partnering with the Minidoka National Historic Site in an effort to educate and inform about this injustice. Themes of racial discrimination and the redress movement of the past will be discussed alongside the rising anti-Asian hate and intergenerational healing of today.