08 Sep Marc Stirdivant Scholarship for Justice 2025
At the beginning of World War II, Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527 allowed U.S. government agencies to arrest and imprison so-called ”enemy aliens,” Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants from across the U.S. and others. One of the many confinement sites was the Tuna Canyon Detention Station, a former Civilian Conservation Corp Camp which was enclosed by a ten-foot fence topped with barbed wire and patrolled by armed guards. This site, originally occupied by the native Tongva people, was located in Tujunga only fourteen miles from downtown Los Angeles.
From December 16, 1941, to October 30, 1943, approximately 2,000 people were imprisoned at Tuna Canyon in violation of their civil liberties. Many were leaders of their ethnic communities and therefore seen as threats to the national security of the United States. These individuals included Japanese language school teachers and staff, priests and ministers, businessmen, educators, newspapermen, martial arts instructors, fishermen, and farmers. At Tuna Canyon, they were detained until they could be transferred to other confinement sites. The arrests of the people in Tuna Canyon Detention Station was based on the Alien Enemies Act, which is different from the authority used to exclude Japanese from the West Coast under Executive Order 9066 and from there to ten War Relocation Authority camps such as Manzanar.
On June 25, 2013, the Los Angeles City Council designated the Tuna Canyon site as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument and created a working group to begin the process of memorializing the Tuna Canyon Detention Station. This group, the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition, is working to ensure that the Detention Station that once occupied this land is not forgotten. We believe that so long as our youth remember and articulate history through art, essay and video, we can help prevent such acts of civil injustice from being repeated. Thus, the Marc Stirdivant Scholarship for Justice scholarship is awarded each year to youth who articulate history through art, essay and video media. We hope you prove TCDS right.