Labor and War on U.S. Route 12 | Post 34 | Idaho
Wyoming, I usually say without hesitation. But now I must add Idaho. Based on sheer dramatic beauty, my response answers a question conceivable only in the context of virtual travel: Where have you been that you would most like to visit?
From the Lolo Pass, down through the Nez Perce-Clearwater National Forests and across the Idaho Panhandle to Lewiston, I stuck almost exclusively to U.S. Route 12, which itself clasps the turning Lochsa and Clearwater Rivers like a perfect shadow. I exhaled at peaceful lodging and admired small communities — faithful and Main Street (the kind of America, I noted in Wyoming, that Google decides not to photograph for a decade).
Alas, some of the stories underlying U.S. Route 12 are full of significant strain. This highway, which more or less traces the westward route of the Lewis and Clark expedition, literally and geographically bears scars of American history’s shameful cross-cultural moments.
One story, perhaps predictably for these parts, involves the white man’s engagement with Native Americans — here, the Nez Perce — but the other story starts down this road:
A short walk up that dirt piste, adjacent to Canyon Creek (which, in this image, is passing under Route 12 into the Lochsa), are the remains of the Kooskia Internment Camp. According to a 1943 issue of the Lewiston Morning Tribune, the Kooskia Internment Camp was “the first experiment in this country in the utilization of Japanese alien labor on government construction.” In short, about 250 of the 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry that the U.S. forcibly incarcerated stateside during World War II helped build Route 12.
As the Tribune article would have it (“Jap Internees Work Hard, Well Treated, At Kooskia Road Camp”), the impounded should have been quite grateful for their good fortune. These inmates, after all, were no longer confined to the heavily guarded facilities of the War Relocation Authority, but instead “were given an opportunity to volunteer for government work… [and] given a chance to learn a trade and earn a wage.” It was $55 per month. And, as the Tribune reported a presiding immigration officer explaining, “You may well feel a considerable degree of satisfaction because of your selection…. This is an honor camp, a small community of workmen designed to give you the opportunity to lead a normal life while here.” The Tribune reported that these satisfied, honored, and normal-life-leading captives included 40-year U.S. residents, American university graduates, a “jui jitsui instructor of police officers,” and “fathers of American-born sons serving in the United States army.”
Post-war, the Kooskia camp was abandoned and forgotten to such an extent that University of Idaho anthropologists only recently began attending to it as an archaeological site.
Also on the raw end of U.S. government policy (and of U.S. government failure to abide by U.S. treaties), the Nez Perce Tribe at least can point to an intact memorial to its history, the Nez Perce National Historical Park:
While the park actually spans 38 distinct sites in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, its headquarters is in Spalding — directly across the Clearwater River from U.S. Route 12 — which was named for Reverend Henry Spalding, a 19th-century Presbyterian missionary long involved with the Nez Perce.
The surrounding region, including parts of eastern Washington, encompass the terrain of the 1877 Nez Perce War — tribes clashed with the U.S. Army when the government reneged on Treaty of Walla Walla land protections — as well as the site of the 1847 Whitman Massacre, which saw several Cayuse murder a dozen missionaries over the constant mortality of Native Americans by measles and other diseases introduced by white settlers.
Henry Spalding fled Nez Perce country after the Whitman Massacre, but later returned to promote Presbyterianism over rival Protestant and Catholic missionary efforts. On the Street View course I followed, I failed to notice any visual markers of the Nez Perce beyond the National Historical Park. Nothing, for example, to send me on the trail of Chief Joseph, a key leader in the Nez Perce War. Yet I did pass the Spalding Presbyterian Church, built just after Henry Spalding’s death in 1874.
At Lewiston, near Lewis-Clark State College, I crossed the Snake River into Clarkston. The blurry, white Washington state sign will be the last “welcome to” sign I will see. I am now entering my final state on this westward trip across the U.S. within the Google Street View interface.
Ground covered since last post:
- Start: Lolo, Idaho
- Kooskia, Idaho
- Kamiah, Idaho
- Orofino, Idaho
- Spalding, Idaho
- Lewiston, Idaho
- End: Clarkston, Wash.
Trip to date:
Blog post sources:
https://www.nps.gov/nepe/learn/historyculture/the-spalding-presbyterian-church.htm
Next post:
A Smattering of America, Ancient Skeletons, and Radioactive Waste | Post 35 | Washington
Previous post:
Please Note the Difference Between Street View ART and Street View TRAVEL | Post 33 | Montana
