Miné Ōkubo
Artist Miné Ōkubo created more than 2,000 sketches while incarcerated during World War II. Her memoir, Citizen 13660, became one of the most important firsthand accounts of the Japanese American incarceration.
Wartime Incarceration
Evacuation Claims Act
They were welcome to file a claim. Compensation was another matter. Although the Evacuation Claims Act offered reimbursement for wartime property losses, many Japanese Americans recovered only a small fraction of what they had lost.
National Japanese American Student Relocation Council
Behind barbed wire, thousands of Japanese American students faced a future that suddenly seemed impossible. Through determination, community support, and the work of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, more than 4,000 students found their way back to college.
Tacoma Nihongo Gakkō
A school built to preserve language, culture, and dignity for Tacoma’s Japanese American children later became a registration site for their forced removal during World War II. The same place that taught them how to belong became one of the places where they were ordered to disappear.
Japanese American National Museum
The Japanese American National Museum opened on May 15, 1992, just days after the Rodney King verdict sparked the LA riots. Leaders like Bruce Kaji and Col. Young Oak Kim helped create JANM to ensure the history of Japanese American incarceration would never be forgotten.
Poston War Relocation Center
The largest American concentration camp during World War II stretched across the Arizona desert so far that authorities considered guard towers unnecessary. At its peak, Poston became the third-largest “city” in Arizona, holding more than 17,000 Japanese Americans.
Tanforan Assembly Center
They turned a racetrack into a prison. Families slept in converted horse stalls at Tanforan Assembly Center, surrounded by the smell of manure.
Leupp Isolation Center
150 military police guarded fewer than 60 unarmed men at Leupp Isolation Center. Most were never charged with a crime. No one could explain why they were there, not even the people who ran it.