2017 Grant Project Summaries

Please note: projects are listed by the states of the grant recipients.

California

Recipient: Go For Broke National Education Center (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: The Go For Broke Experience: Monument, Exhibition and Oral History
Grant Award: $60,843
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Go For Broke National Education Center will integrate videos from their extensive oral history collection into the Defining Courage Exhibition, which opened to the public in May 2016. Video viewing stations will be organized around eight different themes: the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor; racism and discrimination as a citizen and soldier; the Military Intelligence Service and media propaganda-making; the economic and psychological effects of incarceration; combat experience; the Loyalty Questionnaire; the draft and resistance; and exploring courage through the legacy of the Nisei soldier. A kiosk in the center’s lobby will enable visitors to search more than 1,200 veteran’s oral histories, as well as a list of more than 16,000 names of Japanese American World War II veterans that are engraved on the nearby monument that was established in 1998 as a tribute to Nisei soldiers. A launch event and a scholar panel event will raise awareness of the exhibit.

Recipient: Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Contested Histories: Art and Artifacts from the Allen Hendershott Eaton Collection
Grant Award: $250,958
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will conserve 102 three-dimensional artifacts from the Allen Hendershott Eaton collection, and produce a traveling exhibition of items collected in the 1940s by folk art expert Eaton. During Eaton’s visits to several of the War Relocation Authority camps, he acquired artwork created by Japanese American incarcerees, with the intention of creating an exhibit to honor the artists and raise awareness of the injustices Japanese Americans faced during World War II. Though Eaton did not carry out the exhibition before he died in 1962, JANM acquired the collection in 2015 and assessed the conservation needs of the 455 items with a 2016 JACS grant. The National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program Eaton artifacts will be featured in a traveling exhibit that will visit twelve locations around the country, including former confinement sites, community centers, and libraries.

Recipient: Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Digitization and Accessibility of JANM’s Moving Image Collection
Grant Award: $228,622
Site(s): Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Park County, WY; Rohwer Relocation Center, Desha County, AR; Jerome Relocation Center, Chicot and Drew Counties, AR; Granada Relocation Center (Amache), Prowers County, CO
Description: The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will digitize and preserve 13 moving image collections, including 45 home movies, from Japanese American families made between the 1920s and the 1950s. These rare and invaluable moving images capture everyday life before, during and after World War II. Moving images that provide glimpses into life behind barbed wire in different War Relocation Authority incarceration sites are a highlight of the collection. JANM will make the films searchable and available to the general public on its website, and select clips for display online and in JANM’s lobby.

Recipient: Los Angeles Conservation Corps (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Los Angeles Conservation Corps Cultural Landscape Stabilization
Grant Award: $47,341
Site(s): Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: The Los Angeles Conservation Corps (LACC) will lead youth conservation crews in conducting hands-on conservation work at the Manzanar National Historic Site. As part of LACC’s mission to provide training opportunities for at-risk youth, participants will learn about Manzanar’s historical, cultural, and natural significance, and receive technical training to conduct site work. LACC will work closely with Manzanar National Historic Site to identify conservation projects, such as trail restoration and vegetation clearing, to help preserve the site’s cultural landscape.

Recipient: National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc. (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: Dislocation and Divergence: Causes and Consequences of Executive Order 9066
Grant Award: $196,200
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc. (NJAHS) will expand five sections of the permanent exhibit at the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center located at the Presidio. New exhibitions will include content ranging from the Japanese American incarceration experience to service in the armed forces, to different responses to the “Loyalty Questionnaire.” Visitors will 3 experience the exhibition through diverse media such as tablet “flipbooks,” digital displays of artifacts, and interactive maps. NJAHS will also create a traveling exhibit to recognize the 75th Anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Recipient: National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc. (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: From the Camps They Served: Nisei Soldier Digital Collections Grant Award: $79,700
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc., will partner with the University of San Francisco to digitize more than 300 artifacts connected to Japanese Americans who served in the U.S. military while their families remained in incarceration sites. University students will research, catalog, and scan these rare objects, including personal diaries and mementos, military uniforms, and dog tags and POW tags from veterans’ private collections. NJAHS will also develop an online portal to make the objects easily accessible to researchers and the public.

Recipient: Poston Community Alliance (Lafayette, CA)

Project Title: Restoration of the Poston Elementary School Site I Library
Grant Award: $77,701
Site(s): Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston), La Paz County, AZ
Description: The Poston Community Alliance will produce comprehensive construction documents for the restoration of Building 12 of the Poston Elementary School Site, and will make critical repairs to the roof and canopy of the building to prevent further deterioration of the adobe walls and interior of the building. The restoration of Building 12, used as a school library during the incarceration, will allow for its future use as a Visitor Center and exhibit space. The Poston Elementary School Site is the only remaining building complex at Poston.

Recipient: The Regents of the University of California (Berkeley, CA)

Project Title: Japanese American Internment Sites: A Digital Archive
Grant Award: $294,715
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley, will complete a comprehensive digital archive of its War Relocation Authority (WRA) holdings. The project will add approximately 130,000 scans of WRA records to the publicly accessible Online Archive of California (OAC) The Bancroft Library has already digitized 100,000 items, and is in the process of making an additional 250,000 available online through previous JACS grants. Outside of the National Archives, 4 the University of California, Berkeley is the primary depository for WRA records; adding these materials to the OAC will vastly improve accessibility for researchers and all other users.

Recipient: San Diego Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (San Diego, CA)

Project Title: Never Forget—Our Lost Years
Grant Award: $114,200
Site(s): Colorado River Relocation Center (Poston), La Paz County, AZ
Description: The San Diego Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League will produce a documentary, entitled “Never Forget—Our Lost Years,” focused on the 306 Japanese American families who in 1942 were forced to leave San Diego for California’s Santa Anita Racetrack and then were moved to the Poston incarceration site in Arizona. Interviews with Japanese Americans who lived through incarceration, as well as with younger generations, will illustrate the lasting impacts of incarceration on Japanese American families. The film will also feature the personal stories of many of the 108 men from the community who served in the U.S. Army.

Recipient: The Tides Center, National Veterans Network (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: Sharing the Lessons of Japanese American WWII Soldiers from WRA Confinement Sites
Grant Award: $107,708
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Tides Center, National Veterans Network (NVN) and the Smithsonian Asian Pacific (APAC) American Center will build upon their Nisei Soldier Congressional Gold Medal Digital Exhibition through the development of educational materials to expand the exhibition’s reach across the country. The NVN and APAC will develop middle and high school curriculum highlighting Japanese American veterans of World War II that include soldiers whose families lived behind barbed wire in U.S. confinement sites. The curriculum will be distributed through Teaching Tolerance, the educational arm of the Southern Law Poverty Center.

Recipient: Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition (Pacoima, CA)

Project Title: Tuna Canyon Detention Station Legacy Project
Grant Award: $54,000
Site(s): Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Los Angeles County, CA
Description: The Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition will conduct at least 25 interviews with descendants of Tuna Canyon detainees and produce a video to enhance viewers’ experiences of “Only the Oaks Remain: The Tuna Canyon Detention Station Traveling Exhibit.” The video, including full interview transcripts, will be 5 made available to students, researchers, and the general public on the Coalition’s website. There are no detainees still living, but their descendants’ recollections and reactions to archival materials, including their family’s letters and government case files, will provide invaluable oral histories of Tuna Canyon.

Recipient: Visual Communications (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Manzanar, Diverted
Grant Award: $83,765
Site(s): Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: Visual Communications, working in partnership with filmmaker Ann Kaneko, will complete a one-hour documentary and accompanying website examining the intersections between environmental and political histories of the Manzanar site. The documentary will draw from interviews with Native Americans forced from the land, farmers and ranchers whom the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power bought out, and Japanese Americans incarcerated at Manzanar during World War II, as well as historic photographs and other archival materials. The film will also link the history of the site to present-day issues. The accompanying website will include a timeline, a bibliography, video interviews not included in the film, a study guide for the film, and additional resources.

Connecticut

Recipient: Yale University (New Haven, CT)

Project Title: Out of the Desert: Public Symposium, Comprehensive Curriculum Development, and Immersive Digital Portal
Grant Award: $76,374
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Yale University’s Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration (RITM) will convene a two-day public symposium to mark the 75th Anniversary of Executive Order 9066. The symposium will include workshops on best practices in historic preservation, digitization of archival materials, and online dissemination of content. Yale University also will partner with Brown University to develop a five-day, standards-aligned high school curriculum, which will be released to 8,000 schools around the country in conjunction with the symposium.

District of Columbia

Recipient: National Japanese American Memorial Foundation (Washington, DC)

Project Title: National Japanese American Memorial Foundation Digital Storytelling Project
Grant Award: $27,066
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The National Japanese American Memorial Foundation (NJAMF) will direct and support five high school students in creating digital-media presentations of stories related to five confinement sites. NJAMF will incorporate these stories, along with five stories created during a previous project, into a stand-alone website as well as a mobile app for visitors to the National Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism in World War II located in Washington, D.C. The final website and mobile app will include all ten War Relocation Authority sites in a cohesive historical narrative. Students will learn digital storytelling techniques and connect with Japanese Americans who were incarcerated at the five sites during a two-and-a-half-day workshop.

Hawaii

Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (Honolulu, HI)

Project Title: Directory of Japanese American Internees of Hawai‘i
Grant Award: $45,900
Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, HI and other internment sites in Hawai‘i
Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i will develop an interactive and searchable online database of the 2,263 people of Japanese ancestry who were arrested and detained in Hawai‘i—then a U.S. Territory—during World War II. Families and researchers will be able to find details on an individual’s occupation, family members, place of residence before incarceration, and the confinement site where they were interned. Additional materials, such as oral history transcripts, photos and videos, will be linked to the individual’s data, and will provide more personal insight into those interned at Honouliuli and other internment sites in Hawai‘i.

Recipient: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (Honolulu, HI)

Project Title: Hawai‘i’s Japanese American Wartime Evacuees
Grant Award: $109,912
Site(s): Honouliuli Internment Site, Honolulu County, HI and Sand Island Detention Camp, Honolulu County, HI 7
Description: The Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai‘i (JCCH) will archive and digitize over 5,000 pages of documents related to the forced evacuation of 1,500 people of Japanese ancestry from 23 areas throughout Hawai‘i. These individuals were not included in the roughly 2,300 who were interned at Honouliuli, Sand Island, and Hawai‘i’s other internment sites. The history of these “evacuation sites” remained largely unknown until after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and is still under-examined. JCCH also will produce a book to document the context and circumstances of this lesser-known history, including the evacuation, government actions, community responses, and evacuee’s personal experiences.

Illinois

Recipient: Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (Chicago, IL)

Project Title: The Kansha Project
Grant Award: $78,956
Site(s): Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, CA
Description: The Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL Chicago) will engage college-aged students in learning about the impacts of incarceration on Japanese American communities during World War II through educational trips to Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo neighborhood and the Manzanar National Historic Site. Through interactive workshops and group discussions, Kansha Project participants will explore the various facets of Japanese American incarceration history, and share their educational projects with the Chicago Japanese American community at a culmination event. Program alumni will develop a curriculum and implementation guide for other JACL chapters to replicate the program.

New Mexico

Recipient: New Mexico Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (Albuquerque, NM)

Project Title: “Confinement in the Land of Enchantment” Traveling Exhibit and Community Presentations
Grant Award: $85,926
Site(s): Santa Fe Internment Camp (Department of Justice, INS Facility), Santa Fe County, NM; Fort Stanton Internment Camp (Department of Justice, INS Facility), Lincoln County, NM; Camp Lordsburg (US Army Internment Facility), Hidalgo County, 8 NM; and Old Raton Ranch (Department of Justice, INS Facility), Santa Fe County, NM
Description: The New Mexico Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League will produce a traveling exhibit and give community presentations focused on the experiences of Japanese Americans confined at New Mexico sites during World War II. The exhibit and presentations will be based on extensive research conducted during an earlier phase of the “Confinement in the Land of Enchantment” project. Presentations scheduled for the Santa Fe, Lordsburg, and Fort Stanton sites will introduce locals to the exhibit and raise awareness among New Mexico residents of the existence of World War II confinement sites in the state. Presentations will include panel discussions with survivors, descendants of those incarcerated, and scholars.

Washington

Recipient: Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial Association (Bainbridge Island, WA)

Project Title: Exclusion Departure Deck, Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial
Grants Award: $187,668
Site(s): Eagledale Ferry Dock, Bainbridge Island, Kitsap County, WA
Description: The Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial (BIJAEM) Association will build the Exclusion Departure Deck, a representation of the former Eagledale Ferry Dock, where Bainbridge Island Japanese Americans, forced to move from their homes and community, boarded a ferry to Seattle, beginning their transfer to confinement sites. Evoking the power of place, the deck will provide visitors with a glimpse of what it was like for Bainbridge Island men, women, and children, escorted by U.S. Army soldiers, to depart from the former Eagledale ferry landing, leaving their friends and homes behind. The deck will be built at the end of the existing 276-foot memorial story wall, which tells the history of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community through a series of terracotta panels. BIJAEM will also replace and enhance nearby landscaping and modify the existing storm water retention and drainage system for the Exclusion Departure Deck.

Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)

Project Title: Making Connections with the Japanese American Incarceration II: The Online Teacher Course
Grant Award: $208,031
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Densho will develop a six to eight hour online course for teachers that connects the Japanese American World War II incarceration history with both stories of discrimination faced by other groups during World War II and similar issues that are relevant today. Teacher workshops in Seattle, Washington and Birmingham, Alabama will test and refine the course, which will be available free of charge to teachers across the country. The training will increase teachers’ topical understanding and equip them with tools to incorporate this topic into other classroom subjects while appealing to a changing student demographic.

Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)

Project Title: Sites of Shame – A Comprehensive Online Resource of the Confinement Sites
Grant Award: $244,551
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Densho will make significant updates to its 2005 Sites of Shame website, which connects online content related to all of the known War Relocation Authority, Department of Justice, U.S. Army, and Wartime Civil Control Administration sites. Along with new information on many confinement sites, the updated website will include information on additional sites that were not widely known when the website first launched. Updates will include the addition of historical and archaeological research and preservation efforts, enhancements to the website’s interactive map, links to other online resources, and improvements in usability and accessibility.

Recipient: Wing Luke Memorial Foundation dba Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience (Seattle, WA)

Project Title: Inspiring Future Generations: Friends and Supporters Who Helped Those Incarcerated
Grant Award: $148,764
Site(s): Minidoka Relocation Center, Jerome County, ID and other sites
Description: The Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, in partnership with the Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee Foundation, will produce a third graphic novel aimed at familiarizing middle and high school students with personal stories and critical issues arising from the Japanese American confinement. The graphic novel will feature stories of individuals outside of the Japanese American community who spoke out against incarceration, directly assisted Japanese American incarcerees, or provided assistance and comfort following incarceration. School curriculum resources, an animated video short, project website, book launch event, and teacher training will further assist educators and students in broadening their understanding of the confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Wyoming

Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)

Project Title: Building a Japanese American Confinement Sites Consortium
Grant Award: $60,599
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (HMWF), in collaboration with partners representing various confinement sites and national organizations working to preserve Japanese American World War II history, will implement plans to establish and launch the Japanese American World War II Confinement Sites Consortium. The Consortium will develop a communications infrastructure and sustainable framework to facilitate information sharing, encourage collaboration and increase capacity for outreach and action on issues focused on the preservation and interpretation of Japanese American incarceration history.