2021 Grant Project Summaries

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

Alaska

Recipient: Japanese American Citizens League, Alaska Chapter (Anchorage, AK)

Project Title: World War II Confinement and the Last Frontier
Grant Award: $30,000
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Japanese immigrants left indelible marks on Alaska, including contributions by Jujiro Wada to dog mushing, Sotoro “Harry” and Tomo Kawabe to education, and Shonosuke Tanaka to community life and mutual aid. Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the government imprisoned these same local leaders at Fort Richardson and sent their family members to confinement at Puyallup and eventually Minidoka. These diverse experiences will be highlighted through oral history interviews and primary source materials, curriculum, and interpretation at the Fort Richardson Internment Camp site.

California

Recipient: Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: Angel Island Connections: Developing Digital and Traveling Exhibits about the Japanese American Detention at Angel Island During World War II
Grant Award: $85,500
Site(s): Angel Island Immigration Station, Marin County, CA
Description: The Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, in partnership with Angel Island State Park and CyArk, will create exhibits to interpret and educate the public about the history of Japanese American incarceration during World War II at Angel Island and its connections to other confinement sites. The first 3D virtual exhibit will combine the emotional impact of 3D experiences with oral histories collected through digital storytelling workshops. This virtual exhibit will inform the development of a traveling exhibit, which will be shared at various sites. National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program

Recipient: Fred T. Korematsu Institute (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: “Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story” Multimedia Curriculum
Grant Award: $162,948
Site(s): Topaz Incarceration Site, Millard County, UT; Tanforan Assembly Center, San Mateo County, CA
Description: The Fred T. Korematsu Institute will create a multimedia curriculum for the award-winning documentary “Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story.” The curriculum will reach educators and students nationwide through online resources, teacher conferences, and other targeted outreach. Through the life experiences of Fred Korematsu, the lesson plans will address six critical issues: racial justice, immigration, U.S. legal cases, resistance, Executive Order 9066 and the Constitution, and detention centers.

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

Project Title: Contested Histories: Preserving and Sharing a Community Collection
Grant Award: $245,581
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will develop an exhibit featuring works from the Allen Hendershott Eaton collection. Some camp survivors and their families donated works of art and furniture to Eaton, an art historian who was conducting research for his 1952 book Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps. This exhibition will take place at JANM and will then travel to four venues throughout the country.

Recipient: Manzanar Committee (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Manzanar Remembered: An Online Archive of Pilgrimages and the Endeavor to Establish the Manzanar National Historic Site
Grant Award: $48,094
Site(s): Manzanar Incarceration Site, Inyo County, CA
Description: Manzanar Committee will partner with Densho to create an online archive of documents, photographs, and video footage focused on how Manzanar has been remembered over the years, and how it was established as the Manzanar National Historic Site. Archival material held by the Manzanar Committee and the Sue Kunitomi Embrey Archives at the Western Archeological and Conservation Center will be a focus. Additional collecting will target community sources, particularly Japanese American newspapers; and fifteen life-history interviews will be conducted.

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

Project Title: Enemy Alien Files: Department of Justice Internment Sites
Grant Award: $119,273
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: This project will update the Enemy Alien Files: Hidden Stories of World War II exhibit to place the mass incarceration of Japanese American communities within the historic context of the United States government’s World War II Enemy Alien Program, which crossed two continents and imprisoned more than 135,000 people of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry. Results will consist of three components: the updated traveling exhibit, a four-venue exhibit tour with opening programming, and an online exhibit resource.

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

Project Title: Through Our Eyes: An Investigation into Rohwer and Jerome Incarcerees Relations with African Americans
Grant Award: $159,312
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The National Japanese American Historical Society in collaboration with the National Park Service, content experts, and scholars will produce a professional development series for secondary teachers. They will design a cross-cultural, interdisciplinary curriculum that will examine how relationships evolved between Japanese Americans, incarcerated by the U.S. government in the Arkansas Delta, and African Americans residing in nearby towns. This project will also examine Department of Justice sites in the southern U.S. such as Camp Livingston, LA; Camp Forrest, TN; and Stringtown, OK.

Recipient: Nihonmachi Little Friends (San Francisco, CA)

Project Title: Dreams Interrupted: Uncovering Wartime Experiences of Issei Women
Grant Award: $99,790
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Nihonmachi Little Friends will create a multimedia website called “Dreams Interrupted” featuring the stories of Issei (first generation) women of San Francisco and their Japanese YWCA. Through the lens of their experiences and the facility they founded, the project will explore pre-World War II racial discrimination; the wartime incarceration, exile, and the diaspora of the Issei and their current-day legacy.

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

Project Title: Healing Intergenerational Wounds of Japanese American Confinement: Private and Public Memory at Manzanar and Topaz
Grant Award: $247,773
Site(s): Manzanar National Historic Site, Inyo County, CA; Topaz Incarceration Site, Millard County, UT
Description: The Regents of the University of California will conduct oral history interviews, produce a limited-series podcast, and create artwork that will be disseminated to share the ways in which intergenerational trauma and healing occurred for Japanese Americans following their incarceration during World War II. These interviews will examine and compare how private memory, creative expression, place, and public interpretation intersect at two sites of incarceration: Manzanar in California and Topaz in Utah.

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

Project Title: Memories of Minidoka with Paul Chihara
Grant Award: $14,000
Site(s): Minidoka Incarceration Site, Jerome County, ID
Description: The Regents of the University of California will make a new video installation by creating footage of a site visit to Minidoka in which world-renowned composer Paul Chihara documents his memories of being incarcerated there during his childhood. World-class violinist Jennifer Koh will perform a new solo work by Chihara.

Recipient: UCLA Asian American Studies Center (Los Angeles, CA)

Project Title: Incarceration Storybook: Japanese American History During World War II
Grant Award: $257,834
Site(s): Manzanar National Historic Site, Inyo County, CA; Tule Lake Incarceration Site, Modoc County, CA
Description: The UCLA Asian American Studies Center will create an open access curriculum website digitally linked to archival resources with a ready-to-engage Storybook interface. Storybooks are interactive online curriculum platforms that integrate narrated histories with digital archives and multimedia resources to engage students in online learning. The website will feature a digital Storybook on the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and will include case studies from Manzanar and Tule Lake.

Colorado

Recipient: Colorado Preservation, Inc. (Denver, CO)

Project Title: Amache Documentary Film & Educational Curriculum Project
Grant Award: $291,612
Site(s): Amache Incarceration Site, Prowers County, CO
Description: Colorado Preservation, Inc., will create a documentary film about Amache (Granada Relocation Center) and Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there during World War II. The documentary will be aired statewide and regionally on public television and screened at the Amache Museum in Granada, Colorado. The film will be accompanied by educational curriculum for 6th through 12th grade social studies and history classes that will include study guides and several short films.

Recipient: University of Colorado, Denver (Denver, CO)

Project Title: Heart Mountain Incarceration Site Digital Documentation Phase II
Grant Award: $50,639
Site(s): Heart Mountain Incarceration Site, Park County, WY
Description: The University of Colorado Denver will build on the LiDAR scanning and 3D model already completed of the hospital smokestack at Heart Mountain to undertake additional LiDAR scanning of the surrounding landscape, including site features such as building foundations, barracks, and circulation networks. The result will be a broader understanding of the physical context and building remnants of the historic site. The data produced will be archived in multiple locations and posted online.

Hawaii

Recipient: Japanese American Citizens League of Hawaii, Honolulu Chapter (Honolulu, HI)

Project Title: Video Documentary: Forced Removal of Hawaii AJAs During World War II
Grant Award: $150,000
Site(s): Sand Island Detention Camp, Honolulu County, HI and Honouliuli Internment Camp, Honolulu County, HI
Description: The Japanese American Citizens League of Hawaii, Honolulu Chapter will produce a documentary about the unlawful and forced removal of 1,500 Japanese Americans in Hawaii displaced from their homes during World War II. Building on the work of an earlier JACS grant to archive related historical documents and produce a written summary of government actions, community responses, and 6 personal experiences, this project will include interviews and period footage and photographs.

Illinois

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

Project Title: Crystal City Oral Histories: Bonds between the Japanese American/Japanese Latin American and Chicanx Communities
Grant Award: $134,770
Site(s): Crystal City Internment Camp (DOJ), Zavala County, TX
Description: The Chicago Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League will partner with Tsuru for Solidarity, Densho, and the Japanese American National Museum to collect and preserve oral histories from Crystal City’s Chicanx community, who have unique ties to Japanese American World War II incarceration history given their proximity to Department of Justice Crystal City Internment Camp in Texas. The oral history project will be enriched by a photographic exhibit, an article on the local cemetery, a summary film, and a cross-cultural culminating event.

Recipient: Japanese American Service Committee (Chicago, IL)

Project Title: Japanese American Service Committee Public History Internship Program
Grant Award: $62,843
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) will host a summer internship program to train participants in archival research skills and multimedia narrativebuilding tools using the source materials of the JASC Legacy Center, which reflect the experiences of Japanese Americans who resettled in the Chicago area during the postwar era. The project will engage new generations in the production of short documentary videos and podcast episodes that tell stories of Japanese American incarceration, resettlement, and redress to reach new audiences.

Montana

Recipient: Historical Museum at Fort Missoula (Missoula, MT)

Project Title: Fort Missoula Internment Barracks Rehabilitation and Reconstruction
Grant Award: $533,000
Site(s): Fort Missoula Internment Camp (DOJ), Missoula County, MT
Description: The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula will rehabilitate and reconstruct two original barrack buildings from the World War II Department of Justice Fort Missoula Internment Camp. One of the barracks buildings will be rehabilitated to look as it did when it was used from 1941 to 1944. The second barracks building will be reconstructed and adapted to store the Museum’s artifact collection in a temperature-controlled environment. Construction of these missing barracks buildings will enhance the public’s understanding of the original Fort Missoula Internment Camp.

Pennsylvania

Recipient: Japanese American Citizens League, Philadelphia Chapter (Narberth, PA)

Project Title: The Third Space: Exhibit on Japanese American Resettlement in the Greater Philadelphia Region
Grant Award: $10,000
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American Citizens League Philadelphia Chapter is mounting a webbased exhibit about nearly 7,000 Japanese Americans who resettled in the greater Philadelphia area following their incarceration in one of the ten sites administered by the War Relocation Authority. The exhibit will tell stories of individuals and families through their artwork and photographs juxtaposed with government propaganda. The exhibit will highlight the experiences of East Coast Japanese American communities, broadening the national narrative about Japanese American history.

Rhode Island

Recipient: Brown University (Providence, RI)

Project Title: The Japanese American Memoryscape Project
Grant Award: $222,517
Site(s): Old Raton Ranch Camp (Baca), Santa Fe County, NM; Kooskia Internment Camp, Idaho County, ID; Fort Missoula Internment Camp, Missoula County, MT; Fort Richardson, Anchorage Burrough, AK; and Catalina Prison Camp, Coronado National Forest, AZ
Description: Brown University will use geolocated audio storytelling, immersive wide-angle virtual-reality photography, historic and modern images, and oral history and scholarly interviews to examine questions of land and memory within the context of Japanese American confinement at Army, Department of Justice, and citizen isolation sites. An interactive website and audio-guided roadmap will make these sites more accessible to both in-person and virtual visits by the public.

Washington

Recipient: Northwest Film Forum (Seattle, WA)

Project Title: Tadaima! A Community Virtual Pilgrimage II
Grant Award: $125,000
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Northwest Film Forum will partner with Japanese American Memorial Pilgrimages and other Japanese American organizations to plan and produce a four-week, online virtual pilgrimage with educational videos and live-streamed panels. Tadaima II will educate viewers on the smaller, lesser-known stories of incarceration and feature elder panels and discussions of intergenerational trauma, identity, and artistic interpretation related to Japanese American World War II incarceration.

Wyoming

Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)

Project Title: Heart Mountain Barrack Exhibit
Grant Award: $77,527
Site(s): Heart Mountain Incarceration Site, Park County, WY
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will recreate three living spaces, supplemented by interpretive material, within an original barrack returned to the site in 2015. The recreated spaces will rely on input from scholars and formerly incarcerated residents, including Bacon Sakatani and Bunny Matsumura Omigachi, to make each space personal and biographical, and will complement the classroom and exhibit space already present in the other half of the building.

Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)

Project Title: Heart Mountain Root Cellar Restoration Documentary
Grant Award: $26,987
Site(s): Heart Mountain Incarceration Site, Park County, WY
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will combine footage of a 2021 restoration effort with archival images and documents to produce a short documentary film that tells the story of the restoration of the only known remaining crop-storage cellar at Heart Mountain. The root cellar was a support facility for the “Heart Mountain Miracle” produced by incarcerated Japanese American farmers and engineers who cut and waterproofed the canal; made agricultural fields from sagebrush land; and developed a system of harvesting, processing, and preserving vegetables for 11,000 people.