Urge Congress to Protect Our National Parks!

For over a century, chapters of American history have been preserved in our national parks and expertly told by National Park Service staff, civil servants who steward historically and culturally significant sites. This includes places that tell the story of the forced removal and incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese Americans – mostly U.S. citizens – during World War II.

Today, places like Manzanar National Historic Site, Amache National Historic Site, Tule Lake National Monument, Minidoka National Historic Site, Honouliuli National Historic Site, Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, the National Japanese American Memorial and other sites managed by the NPS stand as testimony to the actions that our government would later acknowledge as a grave injustice motivated by racial prejudice and wartime hysteria.

Our national parks, battlefields, monuments,  and historic sites are places the public looks to give an objective historical account of an era, not one that sweeps historical facts under the rug. Americans rely on the National Park System to tell the truth, no matter what. They should be able to trust that when they visit a site, they get the full story of what happened there. Americans can handle the truth. These stories rely on national parks and their staff, both essential to the public’s ability to learn about American history and reflect on its continued impacts on the descendants of the Japanese Americans wrongfully incarcerated. 

Given the many attacks on national parks, we must protect the cultural, historical, and economic value of these irreplaceable places for generations to come. We call on Congress to fund national parks and take down signs that discourage the discussion of lived history, and to support the 1916 Organic Act, which calls for national park units to be protected for future generations.

National parks have given a new generation, including descendants of those who were displaced or excluded, spaces to reclaim their stories in the tapestry of national park sites across the country. These landscapes hold hardship, but they also hold resilience and strength. The stories we tell and learn when we visit don’t always have to be gut-wrenching. Joy, connection, and community have been and continue to be the common thread to the national park experience. Reclaiming and reimagining our relationships with these lands, in community with others, is a powerful act.

Ultimately, this is about more than budgets. It’s about who gets to be remembered in the American story, and who doesn’t. Erasing history is the opposite of what the National Park Service has stood for since its founding more than a hundred years ago. As mandated by law, national parks tell the full story of America – from our darkest chapters to our greatest triumphs. Americans must reject efforts to delete or rewrite our nation’s history.

Thank you to our partners at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) for drafting this messaging!

Write your Representative and Senators NOW and tell them to protect our parks!