During WWII almost 120,000 Japanese Americans were uprooted from the West Coast regions that were deemed military exclusion zones, moved cities and states away, and controlled under severe restrictions. We can better understand the lives, experiences, and stories of these people by studying objec

Nearly seven decades after the beginning of World War II, the Congressional Gold Medal was bestowed on the Japanese American men who served with bravery and valor on the battlefield, even while their families were held in internment camps by the very country for which they fought. Through videos,

Students will learn about the personal experiences of Japanese American incarcerees during World War II and will practice communicating information concisely by developing an original comic.

Students will gain historical reasoning skills by studying primary sources and comparing them to secondary sources. They will become more familiar with the conditions in Japanese American concentration camps through the personal writings of Stanley Hayami, a high school student who was incarcer

Students will learn about the efforts of Japanese Americans to receive justice after their internment during World War II. This section of A More Perfect Union, an online exhibition, uses artifacts from the Museum's collections

In this online exhibition, students will explore the experiences of Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during World War II, a period of history when racial prejudice and fear upset the delicate balance between the rights of citizens and the power of the state. The st

These identification cards were issued to residents of the internment camps. In order to exercise control and maintain surveillance over the population, internees were given family numbers and their physical characteristics were recorded.

Students will learn about the experience of Issei, the first generation of Japanese immigrants to the United States, through the use of artifacts from the Museum's collections, primary source documents, photographs, and oral histories. This section of the

This Butsudan-Buddhist altar was made from scrap lumber in Jerome Relocation Center in Arkansas. Buddhism was among the religions that was practiced in the internment camps. However, it was not formally recognized in the camp or marked with a specific house of worship within the internment camp g

The National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), founded in 1980 in San Francisco, is a non-profit membership supported organization dedicated to the preservation, promotion, and dissemination of materials relating to the history and culture of Japanese Americans.