In 2011, CyArk was awarded a grant by the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program to create 3D digital recreations of some of the sites associated with the confinement and incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. Today, few buildings remain at the former War Relocation Authority (WRA) centers, making it difficult for visitors to imagine, and all too easy to forget, this important and tragic chapter in United States history.

Using laser scanning and other state-of-the-art technologies, CyArk created 3D digital recreations of portions of the camps at Manzanar, Tule Lake, and Topaz. These reconstructions and interactive virtual tours of the sites, as they appear today, are accompanied by historic photographs, newspaper clippings, oral histories and historic artwork. CyArk’s goal is to provide a glimpse of how these places appeared when Japanese Americans were confined at these sites.
This project was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior.