{"id":3199,"slug":"minidoka-jerome-idaho","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Minidoka was the desert camp — the Jerome County site where 13,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated behind barbed wire, the farm operation that made them grow their own food on sagebrush, the Honor Roll that listed the nearly 1,000 who left camp to fight.","The camp was the contradiction — the tarpaper barracks in the desert, the canal irrigation that turned the dust to fields, the soldiers' names on the Honor Roll while their families were inside. The camp closed in 1945; the land went back to sagebrush until the monument.","The site is still there — the visitor center, the reconstructed barracks, the Honor Roll that's been restored. The file keeps Minidoka: the incarceration, the farming, and the camp that's the war's monument.","Minidoka is the archive's internment file — the Jerome camp, the Honor Roll, and the site that's the desert's memory."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Minidoka is the archive's internment file — the 13,000 incarcerated, the farm they built, and the site that's the monument.","A camp that was a farm keeps its roll — the file's suggestion being that Minidoka's hold is the Honor Roll: the soldiers who enlisted from inside, the sagebrush that became fields, and the site that's still there."]}],"name":"Minidoka","aliases":[],"type":"SITE","type_label":"Site","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","LOCAL_FOLKLORE","WWII"],"groups":["dark-history","legends"],"desc":"The sagebrush camp—13,000 in the Snake River plain.","full_desc":"A site in Jerome, Idaho, Minidoka is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The sagebrush camp—13,000 in the Snake River plain. It sits in the archive under World War II, dark history and local folklore. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Jerome","county":null,"state":"Idaho","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":42.717617,"lon":-114.515788,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site / memorial","research_notes":"dark2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":3207,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported a presence at the site. The reports at Minidoka are the site's second history — unofficial, unverified, and stubbornly retold. The file holds testimony rather than proof; the claim remains anecdotal. Whatever walks there, it walks often enough to keep the reports coming. The account stays in the file — reported, retold, unresolved.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Minidoka","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidoka_National_Historic_Site","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The 1942-45 internment is documented. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Minidoka' carry the record. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from. The report keeps its place in the record.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1942","date_end":"1945","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Minidoka","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidoka_National_Historic_Site","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Minidoka","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidoka_National_Historic_Site","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Minidoka","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minidoka","desc":"Topics referred to by the same term","extract":"Minidoka is a name of Dakota Sioux origin meaning \"a fountain or spring of water\". It is a name shared by several geographic locations in the Magic Valley region of southern Idaho in the United States:\n\nMinidoka, Idaho, a town in Minidoka County\nMinidoka County, Idaho\nMinidoka Dam, located north of Acequia, Idaho\nMinico High School (also known as Minidoka County High School), near Rupert, Idaho\nMinidoka National Forest, a former U.S. national forest\nMinidoka National Historic Site, an American concentration camp where Japanese Americans were imprisoned during World War II\nMinidoka Project, an irrigation project\nMinidoka Ranger District, a district of Sawtooth National Forest\nMinidoka: 937th ","img":null,"score":74},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}