SACRAMENTO — The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP), a state-funded program administered by the California State Library, announced that funding for gathering first-person Japanese American World War II interment accounts will be given first priority in their upcoming grant cycle.

The CCLPEP stressed that these accounts have to be gathered before they are lost forever.

The category of projects that will be given priority include audio or video recordings of exclusion, detention, internment, and military service; publication of written works such as journals, memoirs, and e-books or other digital media; documentary films that include oral history interviews and other works on the internment experience.

Secondary priority will be given to other documentary films, research or works of fiction, Websites, smartphone applications, photographs, art and written documents, site preservations and virtual experience projects related to the Japanese American incarceration experience.

The maximum grant amount is $25,000, and a total of $450,000 is available this fiscal year. Applications will be available on the CCLPEP Website by Dec. 6, and due by Jan. 21, 2011. 

The CCLPEP was created as the result of the passage of the 1998 California Civil Liberties Public Education Act, legislation sponsored by then-Assemblymember Mike Honda.

For more information about the CCLPEP, contact Linda Springer at (916) 651-6509, CivilLiberties@library.ca.gov or visit http://CivilLiberties.library.ca.gov.