Arkansas
Recipient: University of Arkansas (Fayetteville, AR)
Project Title: Rising Above in Arkansas: Expanding the Narrative and Writing Curriculum to Create a More Comprehensive Web ResourceGrant Award: $325,547
Site(s): Jerome Incarceration Site, Chicot and Drew Counties, AR and Rohwer Incarceration Site, Desha County, AR
Description: The University of Arkansas will develop educational curricula and update and expand the Rising Above in Arkansas website, one of the most comprehensive websites on the Rohwer and Jerome incarceration sites in Arkansas. In partnership with the University of Central Arkansas and Arkansas Center for Research in Economics, the University will develop curricula, lesson plans for secondary education classrooms (grades 7-12), and three professional development workshops for Arkansas teachers. The University will work with former incarcerees and their families to create a more comprehensive narrative on the website that more accurately reflects the voices and perspectives of the incarceration community.
The website terminology will be updated following Yale University’s Reparative Archival Description Working Group guidance, and more than 750 new items will be digitized and added to the project archive.
California
Recipient: The Regents of the University of California (Berkeley, CA)Project Title: Preservation, Creation, and Advance Translation of a Community-Oriented Archive of Tule Lake Literary Journals
Grant Award: $296,227
Site(s): Tule Lake Segregation Center, Modoc County, CA
Description: The Regents of the University of California will conserve and digitize an archive of Japanese-language literary journals published at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II. The Regents will establish a consultative framework for expanding English-language access to the Itaru Ina Tule Lake Literary Journal Collection; a rare archive of first-hand perspectives of Issei and Kibei Nisei incarcerated at Tule Lake. A Community Advisory Board will provide guidance to the Translation Collective (a group of scholars and translators) who will prepare advance draft translations of the journal Tessaku produced by incarcerees at Tule Lake during World War II, and facilitate review and feedback of these documents by Tule Lake survivors and descendants. The collection will greatly enhance the nation’s understanding of Japanese American incarceration and will be made accessible—both in person at the University’s Ethnic Studies Library and online—by summer 2025.
Recipient: Japanese American Cultural and Community Center (Los Angeles, CA)
Project Title: Ask the Mountain for the Menu: A Multisensory Exploration of the Foodways of the War Relocation Authority Camps
Grant Award: $241,997
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American Cultural and Community Center will research and interpret the foodways of the War Relocation Authority camps in order to deepen the nation’s collective understanding of the Japanese American experience. Located in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, the Center will engage the public by sharing the wartime creativity and determination of incarcerees in improving camp conditions and meals. A team of experts will research and develop iconic camp meals and later recreate them with former incarcerees and their families through hands-on workshops and culinary demonstrations. The Center also will engage community members in raising a crop of rice on one-acre of land at the nearby plaza, accompanied by a year-long series of programs to explore the ingenuity of the incarcerees who succeeded in farming desolate, infertile environments at incarceration sites during the war to grow rice—the foundation of Japanese meals. A series of short videos will be produced to document the recipes, the stories of families who farmed while in camp, and to capture the thoughts of program participants.
Recipient: Japanese American National Museum (Los Angeles, CA)
Project Title: In the Future We Call Now: Realitices of Racism, Dreams of Democracy
Grant Award: $655,296
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will redesign their core exhibition, In the Future We Call Now; Realities of Racism, Dreams of Democracy, which will be the country’s largest and most comprehensive exhibition devoted to sharing the experiences of Japanese American communities during World War II. The new exhibition will incorporate work produced through past JACS-funded projects, including the conserved and relocated Heart Mountain barracks; a selection of digitized moving images from JANM’s collections; and other examples of digitized ephemera, documents, and photographs. As part of the exhibition redesign, the Museum will present various artifacts in the 3,500-square-foot Confinement and Resettlement Gallery and also will develop materials and programs for schools visiting the museum in-person or virtually. The revamped exhibition is slated to open in 2026.
Connecticut
Recipient: University of Connecticut (Storrs, CT)
Project Title: Fudeko Project: A Japanese American Digital Journaling ProjectGrant Award: $246,883
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: The University of Connecticut’s Greenhouse Studios and Asian and Asian American Studies Institute will develop a program for Japanese American survivors to share their memories and experiences of their incarceration during World War II. Approximately 10 people will participate in the Fudeko Project; a culturally sensitive and trauma-informed program, and follow a community-engaged methodology to record their personal narratives. Following a series of different prompts, participants will document their stories using familiar tools such as email and letter from the comfort of their homes. The project aims to engage participants from lesser known sites and underrepresented communities, including Nikkei from Alaska and Arizona, Japanese Peruvian/Panamanian deportees and incarcerees, those who resettled across the Midwest and East Coast, and those who were removed to Japan. Long-term preservation of the project’s collections will be ensured through a partnership with Densho.
New York
Recipient: Camera News, Inc., DBA Third World Newsreel (New York, New York)
Project Title: They Took My Father TooGrant Award: $293,484
Site(s): Tuna Canyon Detention Station, Los Angeles County, CA; Tule Lake Segregation Center, Modoc County, CA
Description: Third World Newsreel will produce a film telling the story of a Little Tokyo family separated by the Issei father’s detention at Tuna Canyon Detention Station in 1942. This hybrid documentary, They Took My Father Too, will adapt Japanese-language literature and diaries into a dramatic narrative and use historical drama to bring a Japanese American story of forced removal and family separation to life. They Took My Father Too will shed light on the rarely heard Issei voices and perspectives and the lesser-known Tuna Canyon site. The film will be developed as a short theatrical film, a longer 30-45 minute hybrid documentary for community events, and a shorter version for classroom use to engage students with vital historical and current civil liberties issues. The documentary will be made available nationally for educational, institutional and home use as a DVD and other formats including classroom streaming.
Washington
Recipient: Densho (Seattle, WA)
Project Title: Strengthening Our Legacy: Capacity-building for Densho's Next Generation of Oral Historians
Grant Award: $255,295
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Densho will launch a two-year comprehensive oral history training program and continue to preserve narratives of the wartime incarceration and its multigenerational impacts. Densho will conduct 50-60 interviews documenting first-hand accounts of survivors and their descendants while training up the next generation of oral historians by piloting a community oral historian program, a graduate student fellowship and a staff training program to develop their collective capacity for conducting oral histories while fostering a supportive community of practice for their staff and partners. Video interviews will be accessible on Densho’s website and also web-hosted in partnership with Internet Archive as part of the Densho Digital Repository. The project will be promoted at community events and pilgrimages to explore opportunities for community engagement with survivors and descendant communities.
Recipient: Wing Luke Memorial Foundation
Project Title: Wing Luke Museum’s New Permanent Exhibition, “Honoring Our Journey 2.0/Japanese American Incarceration Experience,” Related Curriculum, and School Tours
Grant Award: $110,084
Site(s): Multiple Sites
Description: Wing Luke Memorial Foundation will design and fabricate a new permanent exhibition, “Japanese American Incarceration Experience” within their permanent exhibition Honoring Our Journey 2.0 at the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience. The exhibition will tell the broader history of Japanese American World War II incarceration using personal stories and archival research to highlight the histories of Puyallup detention facility and Minidoka concentration camp; the main sites where the majority of Seattle’s Japanese American community was incarcerated. This core exhibition will provide a foundation to generate new educational programs, public programs, school tours, curriculum, and teacher trainings to educate visitors and students about the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. The Museum serves 50,000 visitors each year, including 2,500 students on tours. The exhibition is scheduled to open in Fall 2025.
Wyoming
Recipient: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation (Powell, WY)
Project Title: Heart Mountain Root Cellar Restoration: Public Access PhaseGrant Award: $851,826
Site(s): Heart Mountain Incarceration Site, Park Couty, WY
Description: The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation will continue their efforts to restore the single remaining root cellar built by Japanese American incarcerees in 1943. Previous JACS grants have supported earlier phases of restoration and stabilization work of the root cellar, including an initial structural assessment and archaeological survey. The cellar requires one more phase of restoration and stabilization work and safety measures to ensure the space can be safely opened to visitors. The restored root cellar and future interpretive work will tell the history of agriculture at Heart Mountain, the ingenuity and expertise of Japanese American farmers in successfully cultivating nearly 2,000 acres of farmland while incarcerated at Heart Mountain, and their legacy to local homesteaders and communities who continued to use the irrigation canals and farming techniques pioneered by incarceree farmers following the war. The root cellar restoration is slated to be completed by Fall 2025.
Last updated: July 11, 2024