The National Park Service is awarding a $424,760 grant to help restore a historic root cellar at the former Heart Mountain Relocation Center, west of Ralston.

It was the largest of 19 Japanese American Confinement Sites grants announced Monday, which will send more than $2.8 million of federal funding to a mixture of preservation, restoration and education projects.

Another $66,844 will help fund a series of short videos and curriculum for middle-school and high-school students to teach the history of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at Heart Mountain and the Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho. The “Discrimination, Resilience and Community Building: The Resettlement of Japanese Americans in Eastern Washington after WWII” series will be produced by Spokane, Washington-based KSPS Public Television.

The funding is part the Park Service’s efforts to preserve the stories of the more than 120,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941; two-thirds of the incarcerees were U.S. citizens.

U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt said in a statement that the historic confinement sites “tell a complex chapter of United States history — one that we are honored to preserve for future generations.”

Added National Park Service Deputy Director P. Daniel Smith, “These projects help ensure future generations of Americans learn from the struggles and perseverance of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II.”

Japanese American Confinement Sites grants may be awarded to projects associated with the 10 War Relocation Authority centers established in 1942 — including the Heart Mountain center — and more than 40 additional confinement sites. The program’s mission is “to teach future generations about the injustice of the World War II confinement of Japanese Americans and to inspire commitment to equal justice under the law.”

Proposals are chosen through a competitive process that requires applicants to match the grant award with $1 in non-federal funds or “in-kind” contributions for every $2 they receive in federal money.

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation is working to preserve the root cellar, which is the only remaining one at the site. Incarcerees constructed the cellar in 1942 to store produce grown as part of the center’s agricultural program.

The foundation previously received funding to aid in the construction of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center.

Over the past 10 years of the grant program, other projects have included a memorial and exhibit to tell the lesser known stories of Japanese Americans who were forced to leave their homes in Alaskan communities during the war and the restoration of headstones and monuments at the Rohwer cemetery in Arkansas.

Congress established the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program in 2006, authorizing a total of $38 million in funding for the life of the program. Monday’s announcement brings the current award total to more than $29 million.

For more details about the projects, visit www.nps.gov/JACS/.