Obama to memorialize Japanese internment camp

President Obama will give national monument status to a plot of land in his native Hawaii that served as an internment camp for Japanese Americans detained during World World II.

The designation is designed to promote greater awareness to the nationwide internment of Japanese Americans after Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.

The Los Angeles Times, which first reported on the new national monument, notes that the designation comes 73 years to the day after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the confinement of Japanese Americans.

From the Times:

"That order ultimately led to the imprisonment of more than 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast at 10 mainland internment cites, including Manzanar in California. But in Hawaii, then a U.S. territory, more than 1,000 people were interrogated and ultimately imprisoned under martial law that was declared after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"There were 17 internment sites that processed individuals, primarily of Japanese ancestry but also some German and Italian Americans. But Honouliuli was the only one specifically built for prolonged detention, and it held more than 300 internees and 4,000 prisoners of war, according to a National Parks Service study that paved the way for the designation."