A historic Japanese Nisei mural in Washington County, Maryland will be revitalized thanks to a government grant.
According to The Baltimore Sun, the mural is located at the former Fort Ritchie in Cascade. It will be restored and preserved as part of the Building 305 project, which received a $225,000 grant from the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development’s Community Legacy program.
Fort Ritchie was used as a POW camp during World War II. Second-generation Japanese American soldiers served at the camp in military intelligence as translators and interrogators, Local Today reports.
The Nisei mural shows four people making pottery. According to The Baltimore Sun, the mural was uncovered after the new property owners bought the building April 2021.
The owners are interested in doing more research about the painting. Right now, they do not know who painted the mural and why the painted it.
“The only thing we know is where the Nisei did their operations. Realistically, that’s why this mural is in here,” Landon Grove, director and curator of the Fort Ritchie Museum told The Baltimore Sun. “Why it’s scenes of people creating pottery and not scenes of military intelligence is a big mystery. But there’s a lot of interesting things — mysteries associated with this site.”
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