Tule Lake National Monument

CyArk was awarded a grant by the National Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program to create 3D digital recreations of sites associated with the US government's World War II incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans who lived along the West Coast. Tule Lake is one of three sites of Japanese American incarceration that CyArk documented in 2011. The few structures that remain at the sites serve as reminders of democracy's fragility in times of conflict. To further illuminate this history, CyArk used laser scanning and photogrammetry to document the site's buildings and topographical features, processing the data in combination with historical records to create a 3D digital reconstruction of what the site was like during World War II. CyArk's digital reconstruction of Tule Lake provides a unique opportunity for people to connect with this difficult history and ensure that it is never forgotten. Tule Lake is one of ten World War II camps where the US government confined Japanese Americans, the majority of whom were US citizens. Of the ten camps, Tule Lake's legacy remains particularly controversial. In 1943 the US government turned the Tule Lake camp into a "Segregation Center" where they incarcerated Japanese Americans who they deemed "disloyal" based on an ill-conceived questionnaire. People incarcerated at the Tule Lake Segregation Center ended up there for a variety of complex reasons, many having nothing to do with their loyalty to the United States. Commenting on the questionnaire answers that landed people in the "Segregation Center," a government official stated, "We can recognize that the answers wrung from them under the strains and perplexities with which they were faced is no more an indication of disloyalty than medieval trials by torture were an evidence of witchcraft." External Project Link: https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/fALyJX7_Nih1IQ Additional Info Link: https://cyark.org/projects/tule-lake