Thank goodness for footnotes. Some Ellis Island officials and some Jewish groups had objected to the term “concentration camp” being part of the title of an exhibit, slated to open next month at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, about the involuntary incarceration of Japanese Americans in the United States during World War II.
Jewish American and Japanese American leaders met Monday and reached an agreement on the issue.
Under the agreement, the term will remain in the title of the exhibit, “America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience,” and a footnote will be added to the museum display and program booklet distinguishing concentration camps, whether in the United States, Soviet Union or Cambodia, from Nazi death camps.
The show was organized by the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, which displayed the exhibit in 1994 and 1995.
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