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From Barbed Wire to Battlefields: Japanese American Experiences in WWII (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Displacement, Evils of racism
Available

Exhibition on the Japanese American incarceration and on Japanese Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Barbed Wire to Battlefields opened in the Joe W. and D. D. Brown Foundation Special Exhibit Gallery on March 15, 2014, and ran through October 12, 2014. The exhibition featured the photographs of Dorothea Lange , Ansel Adams , and Bill Mambo along with objects and video interviews. In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum put on a slate of public programs including book events, lectures, and film screenings, and incorporated curricular material and a webinar aimed at school children. The exhibition was funded in part by the Annenberg Foundation and the Eugenie and Joseph Jones Family Foundation. The National World War II Museum opened in New Orleans in 2000 at the National D-Day Museum.

Executive Order 9066 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History, Art, Photography
Injustice, Evils of racism
Limited availability

Landmark photographic exhibition on the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans curated by Richard and Maisie Conrat for the California Historical Society in 1972. The first exhibition on this topic to tour nationally—including such venues as the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York—it likely introduced many Americans to this story and was part of a resurgence of interest in the topic both inside and outside the Japanese American community in the 1970s.

Executive Order 9066: 50 Years Before and 50 Years After (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Evils of racism, Injustice, Displacement
Limited availability

Exhibition on the Japanese American experience in the Seattle area mounted by the Wing Luke Asian Museum to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 . The exhibition was organized, scripted, and constructed largely by volunteer community members and was accompanied by an exhibition catalog authored by David Takami.

Reflections of Internment: The Art of Hawaii's Hiroshi Honda (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 9-12, Adult
Art
Displacement, Expression through art, Injustice
No availability

Exhibition of paintings by Hawai'i Kibei artist Hiroshi Honda, most of which depict the various internment and concentration camps he was held in during World War II. The paintings displayed came from a collection discovered and preserved by Honda's son, Ed Honda. Working with an ad hoc committee that included Bill Hoshijo and University of Hawai'i Professor Franklin Odo, the Hondas donated the collection to the Honolulu Academy of Art (HAA) (now the Honolulu Art Museum). With funding from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Reflections of Internment opened at HAA on September 10, 1994, alongside a traveling exhibit, The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942–1945 , a broader survey of art from the concentration camps. An accompanying thirty-three page catalog included essays by Odo and Marcia Morse and color reproductions of nineteen of the artworks; …

Right from Wrong: Learning the Lessons of Honouliuli (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Facing darkness, Rights - individual or societal
Limited availability

Wayside exhibition produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) that debuted in 2011. The sixteen panel exhibition focuses on the Honouliuli detention camp and JCCH's efforts to preserve the site and tell the story of Hawai'i's World War II Japanese American internees. Funding for the exhibition came from a grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program and from the Island Insurance Foundation. JCCH contracted Mo'ili'ili Blind Fish Tank (MBFT) Media to produce the exhibition. Arnold Hiura wrote the exhibition script and Stephen Doi designed and built it.

Henry Sugimoto: Painting an American Experience (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Immigration experience, Displacement
Limited availability

Retrospective exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) featuring the work of Issei artist Henry Sugimoto , who was best known for his depictions of the wartime incarceration experience, many of them executed while he was confined at the Fresno , Jerome , and Rohwer camps. Debuting at JANM in 2001, the exhibition subsequently traveled to Sacramento and to Arkansas.

Hiroshi Honda: Detained (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Evils of racism, Displacement
No availability

Exhibition featuring the internment art of Hiroshi Honda at the Honolulu Academy of Art (HAA) which ran from June 21 to September 9, 2012. Hiroshi Honda: Detained , was the HAA's second exhibition of Honda's art, after Reflections of Internment: The Art of Hawaii's Hiroshi Honda in 1994. The exhibition included drawings and watercolors produced during Honda's internment in camps in Hawai'i and in the continental U.S. drawn from the HAA's permanent collection.

Relics from Camp (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Art, History
Displacement, Injustice
Available

Art installation by Kristine Yuki Aono that debuted at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in 1996. The installation featured soil collected by the artist at each of the ten War Relocation Authority camp sites installed in shallow 3 x 3 square boxes on the floor with glass over them. At each venue, Aono sought community members who lent personal objects from themselves or other family members who had been in each camp that were installed in that camp's box. The exhibition was viewed by walking on the glass over the boxes.

Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Heroism - real and perceived, Patriotism - positive side or complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans in the military during World War II that was organized by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program in 2004. Undaunted Courage included the stories of the 100th Infantry Battalion , 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and Military Intelligence Service as well as a kiosk featuring stories of Japanese American veterans collected by the Go For Broke National Education Center. The exhibition was one of eight exhibitions in the Little Rock, Arkansas, area that were part of the Life Interrupted project, a collaboration between the Japanese American National Museum and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of the exhibitions, all on some aspect of the Japanese American military experience, were displayed at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, the other two being Beyond the Call of Duty: Honoring the 24 Japanese American Medal of Honor Recipients and Witness: Our Brothers' …

U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii

Museum Exhibitions

Private non-profit military museum in Waikiki that includes exhibitions on the army's history in Hawai'i as the well as the role people from Hawai'i have played in army history. Many aspects of the Japanese American World War II story are included in the exhibitions.

U.S. Detention Camps, 1942-1946 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Evils of racism, Displacement, Injustice
No availability

Traveling exhibition organized by the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS) that debuted in April 1990. Consisting of ninety framed photographs with captions, text panels, and titles, U.S. Detention Camps was likely the first exhibition to go beyond the story of the ten War Relocation Authority administered camps to include the so-called " assembly centers " as well as the enemy alien detention camps administered by the army and by the Justice Department as a part of the larger story. Aiming, in the words of project directory and NJAHS president Clifford Uyeda , to tell the full story "from the beginning of the experience to the end," the exhibition begins with the anti-Japanese movement and stretches through the Redress Movement , while also depicting inmate resistance, and controversially, suicides. [1] Venues for U.S. Detention Camps included the Jimmy Carter Museum in Atlanta, Georgia; the Swords to Plowshare Gallery in Detroit, …

What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home? (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Isolation
Widely available

Exhibition on the return of Nisei soldiers to their Hood River, Oregon, home, recounting the chilly reception they received from the local community as well as highlighting those who stood up for them. Curated by Linda Tamura and Marsha Matthews and organized by the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home? debuted at the OHS in Portland in August 2013 in conjunction with the display of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Japanese American veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , 100th Infantry Battalion , and Military Intelligence Service .

Whispered Silences: Japanese American Detention Camps, Fifty Years Later (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Displacement, Power of the past
Available

Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) exhibition that featured photographs of former Japanese American concentration camp sites shot during the 1980s by artist Joan Myers. Debuting in 1995, the exhibition traveled around the country for the next four years. It was accompanied by a book published by the University of Washington Press titled Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II , which includes her photographs along with Gary Okihiro's historical/autobiographical overview of Japanese American history.

Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Evils of racism, Patriotism - positive side or complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans in the military during World War II and their participation in the liberation of Nazi extermination camps organized by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. Witness debuted in on April 20, 1995, in JANM's Legacy Center Gallery to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. It closed on August 27, 1995. [1]

Arts and Crafts from the Camps: The Arkansas Camp Experience (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Beauty of simplicity, Desire to escape
Limited availability

Exhibition of art and craft objects created by Japanese American inmates at the Arkansas concentration camps. Curated by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program in 2004, the exhibition included objects from the collection of Rosalie Gould, a former mayor of McGehee, Arkansas, who had amassed a substantial private collection. [1] Arts and Crafts from the Camps was one of the eight exhibitions mounted in the Little Rock area that were part of the Life Interrupted project, a collaboration between the Japanese American National Museum and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Beyond the Call of Duty: Honoring the 24 Japanese American Medal of Honor Recipients (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Patriotism - positive side or complications, Heroism - real and perceived
Limited availability

2004-05 exhibition on Japanese American recipients of the Medal of Honor , the country's highest military decoration organized by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Of the twenty-four Japanese American recipients, twenty-one were honored for their service during World War II. Beyond the Call of Duty was one of eight exhibitions in the Little Rock, Arkansas, area that were part of the Life Interrupted project, a collaboration between JANM and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of the exhibitions, all on some aspect of the Japanese American military experience , were displayed at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, the other two being Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers and Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II .

Sights Unseen: The Photographic Constructions of Masumi Hayashi (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art
Available

Retrospective exhibition of the work of photographic collage artist Masumi Hayashi held at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Curated by Karin Higa, Sights Unseen included thirty of Hayashi's works—each of which are photo collages consisting of anywhere from five to one hundred forty individual photographs—including several from JANM's collection. This first survey of Hayashi's work included pieces from five different sets of work: abandoned prisons, EPA Superfund sites, Japanese American and Japanese Canadian concentration camps, sacred sites, and portraits of Nikkei . The five Nikkei portraits—of Fumi Hayashida, Yuri Kochiyama , Joy Kogawa, Miné Okubo , and Eji Suyama—were displayed for the first time.

Strength and Diversity: Japanese American Women, 1885–1990 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Female roles, Immigrant experience, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Role of women
No availability

Pioneering traveling exhibition on the experiences of Japanese American women organized by the National Japanese American Historical Society and the Oakland Museum in 1990. Strength and Diversity went on to travel throughout the country as part of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) over the next decade plus.

Pride and Shame (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Immigrant experience, Evils of racism, Injustice
No availability

Early exhibition on the history of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest that was one of the first to highlight the wartime incarceration experience. After its 1970 debut at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle, Washington, a traveling version of Pride and Shame followed that toured numerous venues over the next five years. It was among several key exhibitions that reflected a growing consciousness about the incarceration from this time period.

Crossings: 10 Views of America's Concentration Camps (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Desire to escape
No availability

2009 exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum featuring the work of ten artists, juxtaposing work created by Issei and Nisei artists in the concentration camps and works by contemporary artists that draw on that experience. The "crossings" in the title refers to the "crossing point between generations" that the exhibition strives to provide. Featured artists included Sesshu Foster, Masumi Hayashi , Hisako Hibi , Toyo Miyatake , Tadashi Nakamura, Benji Okubo , Mine Okubo , Shizu Saldamando, Renee Tajima-Peña, and Sadayuki Uno . Crossings opened on April 2, 2009.

Fighting for Tomorrow: Japanese Americans in America's Wars (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Patriotism - positive side or complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Injustice
Limited availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans in the American armed forces that debuted at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in 1995.

Children of Detention Camps, 1942-1946 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Coming of age, Growing up - pain or pleasure
No availability

Traveling exhibition produced by the National Japanese American Historical Society that debuted in February 1992 at San Francisco City Hall. The sixty-panel photo exhibition looked at the incarceration experience from the perspective of children, who made up a significant portion of affected Japanese Americans. In addition to Japanese American youth, the exhibition includes the experiences of Aleuts and Japanese Latin Americans in the U.S. detention camps. A follow up to the 1990 exhibition U.S. Detention Camps, 1942–1946 , Children of Detention Camps was displayed at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California and Children's Museum of Indianapolis among other venues.

Lasting Beauty: Miss Jamison and the Student Muralists (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art
Limited availability

Exhibition featuring murals painted by Japanese American students at Rohwer High School under the direction of art teacher Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel. Lasting Beauty was one of eight exhibitions mounted in and around Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the Life Interrupted project in 2004. It was later shown at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in 2005.

Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Immigrant experience
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans during World War II at the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba, Japan. Displayed from March 16, 2010, to April 3, 2011, Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era commemorated the opening of the approximately 7,500 square foot Sixth Exhibition Gallery (which displays contemporary history) at the National Museum of Japanese History (hereafter Rekihaku). [1] The special exhibition was the first at a Japanese national institution to focus on Japanese Americans, attempting to bring them into the mainstream of Japanese history.

The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Displacement, Beauty of simplicity
Available

Traveling exhibition highlighting art and craft objects made by incarcerated Japanese Americans in wartime concentration camps. Curated by Delphine Hirasuna and based on the 2005 book of the same name, The Art of Gaman exhibition has traveled to fourteen venues since its debut in 2006.

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