July 5, 2012 Carrollton TX to Internment Camps in Arkansas, Shreveport LA to Vicksburg MS

It was a little after 4am and both of us were wide-awake, trying to get just a little more sleep.  Finally, Dick suggested we get packed up and hit the road, which we did, biding Peggy farewell at 4:45.  We made it through and out of Dallas in about 25 minutes.  Perhaps a world record time!

We then drove up through a chunk of Arkansas.  As you look at the map, this may seem a bit out of our way, but there were a couple of sites we wanted to see.  We spent the early afternoon visiting the sites of the Rowher and Jerome Japanese American Internment Camps.  This is part of a much longer interest we both have in this part of our history.  In WWII, The US government issued an order that all Japanese and Japanese Americans (most of them US citizens) on the west coast be brought into internment camps where most of them spent the next 3 or 4 years.  What does this have to do with Arkansas you might ask?  This was one of the really isolated places that the Japanese were brought to.

One of the parts of the interpretation that was so moving at Rowher were several recorded narrations done by George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) who was at this camp when he was a five year old boy.  He did a very powerful and personal job of telling both the larger story and the story of his memories for the camp from nearly 70 years ago.  Somehow, to know that someone who I have respected and even have a FACEBOOK friend, having been held in this camp is additionally sobering.  His story was able to make this site a very special place to visit.  We had a powerful experience in the cemetery with markers there honoring those who died in the camp, as well as so many who served in the military and died in Europe defending the rights that their families were being denied.

We finished out of the day by driving through the corner of Louisiana. Mississippi to Vicksburg. We made an impromptu stop at the Louisiana Cotton Museum.  We were surprised to find this gem of a museum as we were driving through a small town.  This museum especially focuses on the cultivation of cotton after the civil War, including having a sharecropper cabin, and a sharecropper store.  We also got the chance to see how they hand picked cotton and then how it became mechanized.  The displays were well done and interactive.  This place is obviously a site for school field trips.  We enjoyed the staff and learned some things, too.

Finally we crossed the Mississippi River into the state of Mississippi to Vicksburg.  We had a very quick initial visit to the Civil war Battlefield there and will spend tomorrow morning with a longer look.