DAR Members Visit Internment Camps in Southeast Arkansas

(L to R) Jennita Peek; Carol Rudder, Regent; Linda Kercheval; Edith Castleberry

Captain Robert Abernethy Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) recently visited the Japanese-American Internment Camp sites at Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas, and attended the WWII Japanese American Internment Museum Second Anniversary in McGehee.  Present at the museum ceremony were a number of internees who were placed in these camps in the early 1940’s.
The museum opened in 2013 and is housed in a portion of the McGehee Railroad Depot.  The exhibit entitled “Life Interrupted-Against Their Will” was created in 2004 by UALR  students and depicts the history of Jerome and Rohwer internment camps which together housed more than 17,000 Japanese Americans, making these towns the fourth and fifth largest in population in Arkansas at that time.
The trip to visit these sites was in keeping with DAR objectives of Historic Preservation, Education, and Patriotism.