Former Internment Camp Made Cultural Landmark

The Los Angeles City Council voted Tuesday to designate a former World War II-era internment camp in the San Fernando Valley as an historic-cultural monument.

The City Council voted unanimously to include a one-acre oak grove at the former site of the Tuna Canyon Detention Station -- now the Verdugo Hills Golf Course -- on the city's historic-cultural monuments list.

"The Tuna Canyon Detention Station is an important piece of our history in the northeast San Fernando Valley and a reminder of some of our darkest times as a community, nation and world," said Councilman Richard Alarcon, whose district includes the site.

More than 2,500 Japanese people and Japanese-Americans, as well as Germans, Italians and Japanese-Peruvians, were detained at Tuna Canyon Detention Station during World War II.

The detainees, declared "enemy aliens" by the federal government following Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor, were rounded up on Dec. 16, 1941, and kept behind barbed-wire enclosures, watched over by armed guards until May 1942.

The council's vote overturns the Cultural Heritage Commission's rejection earlier this year of an application to include the former internment camp on the city's list of monuments.

In explaining its decision, the commission said the Sun Valley site has none of its original structures.

Alarcon countered that numerous other sites without original historical structures have been included on the list, including a former Disney Studio site that is now a Gelson's market.

"Come on, give me a break. Is this not more important to that?" Alarcon asked last week.

The property owner, Snowball West Investments Inc., hopes to build 224 single-family homes on the site, though an attorney for the company said the firm planned to set aside a commemoration area, as well as apply for historical status with the state.

The oak grove that will be set aside existed at the time the camp was in operation.

Under the council vote, the Planning Department was directed to convene a city working group that will include Councilman-elect Felipe Fuentes, who will be representing the district now represented by the termed-out Alarcon, as well as historians and community advocates.

The working group will appear before the council within 60 days to present its findings and recommendations for signs and other ways of commemorating the site.

--City News Service