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Marc Stirdivant Scholarships for Justice

Submission Rules

Essay Scholarship Rules & Prompt: $600 1st Place,  $200 2nd Place

How do you envision your role in ensuring that the violations that occurred at TCDS don’t recur? Why should the history of TCDS be preserved?

  1. One essay per person, maximum 500 words, double spaced in .docx format. Please title your work.
  2. Essay and entry form must be submitted to TCDSscholarship@gmail.com by midnight October 16, 2025.
  3. Judges will review for originality, writing skill, depth, historic accuracy, and clear action recommendations.
  4. No AI written or assisted essays will be accepted.

Art Scholarship Rules & Prompt: $600 1st Place $200 2nd Place
Only the oaks stand testament to the civil liberties violations that occurred at the TCDS: no historic buildings exist. Create Art that will enable people to understand the history of TCDS and feel deeply enough to stop future civil liberty violations.

  1. One art entry per person.
  2. Visual Art may originate in the following formats (tif, jpeg, pdf), 600 dpi or greater, and submitted electronically with entry form to TCDSscholarship@gmail.comby midnight, Oct. 16, 2025.
  3. Judges will review art based on originality, artistic expression, and skill, applicability to the history of Tuna Canyon, and adherence to the theme.
  4. No AI created art will be accepted.

Video Scholarship Rules & Prompt: $600 1st Place $200 2nd Place
Create a video between 1-3 minutes providing reasons to preserve the history of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station. You may use interviews, pictures, and video (with credit) from the TCDS website.

  1. One video entry per person. Submission with entry form before midnight Oct. 16, 2025.
  2. The video (.mov, mp4, or .avi) should be between 1-3 minutes and submitted with below entry form to TCDSscholarship@gmail.com. Provide a sharable link to the video.
  3. Judges will review the video based upon originality, factual accuracy, audio and visual quality (no PowerPoint) as well as the video’s ability to evoke emotions or actions.
  4. Collaborations will be accepted.

All Scholarship Applicants must review the attached factsheet. Winners announced/posted November 15, 2025.

All Scholarship Applicants must review the attached factsheet. Winners announced/posted November 15, 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.

This information and the application form are on our website.

The submission deadline has passed. Thank you for your interest.