Japanese American National Museum


The Japanese American National Museum is located in Los Angeles, California, and dedicated to preserving the history and culture of Japanese Americans. Founded in 1992, it is located in the Little Tokyo area near downtown. The museum is an affiliate within the Smithsonian Affiliations program.
The museum covers more than 130 years of Japanese-American history, dating to the first Issei generation of immigrants. Its moving image archive contains over of 16 mm and 8 mm home movies made by and about Japanese Americans from the 1920s to the 1950s. It also contains artifacts, textiles, art, photographs, and oral histories of Japanese Americans. The Japanese American National Museum of Los Angeles and the Academy Film Archive collaborate to care for and provide access to home movies that document the Japanese-American experience. Established in 1992, the JANM Collection at the Academy Film Archive currently contains over 250 home movies and continues to grow.

History

Activist Bruce Teruo Kaji was the founding president of the museum. He worked alongside other prominent Japanese-Americans to create the museum. The community had become organized around gaining recognition of the injustice they had suffered from the federal government during World War II.
The museum was conceived as a way to preserve the positive aspects of their full history and culture in the United States. When it first opened in 1992, the museum was housed in the 1925 historic Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple building. Irene Hirano served as its first executive director and later as president and CEO of the museum. In January 1999, the National Museum opened its current Pavilion, designed under the supervision of architect Gyo Obata, to the public. The temple building was used by government officials in 1942 to process Japanese Americans for wartime confinement. It is now used for offices and storage.
In 1993 the museum was given hundreds of artifacts and letters from children in internment camps, which they had sent to San Diego librarian Clara Breed. The material was featured in an exhibit, "Dear Miss Breed": Letters from Camp. It is now part of the museum's permanent collection.
In 1997, the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center was established by Robert A. Nakamura and Karen L. Ishizuka, to develop new ways to document, preserve and make known the experience of Americans of Japanese ancestry. In 1999, the Manabi and Sumi Hirasaki National Resource Center was established to provide access to the museum's information and resources, both at the facility and online. It documents the life and culture of the Japanese Americans.
Akemi Kikumura Yano, author, was the museum's first curator. She succeeded Irene Hirano as president and CEO from 2008 until 2011. During her tenure, in December 2010, the museum was awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Service.
Rev. Greg Kimura, an Episcopal priest, was appointed the president and CEO of the museum, serving between 2012 and 2016. During his time the museum experienced an economic downturn as he looked to promote untraditional exhibits and let go core staff members. He resigned in May 2016 to pursue other work opportunities.
In 2016, Ann Burroughs was announced to replace him as the new interim CEO and was officially selected shortly thereafter. Burroughs spoke of her role: "I am committed to reinvigorating and finding new ways to advance the museum’s key values, emphasizing the importance of being vigilant about democracy and stressing the value of diversity in our world today."
The museum has refused to comply with Donald Trump's Executive Order 14253, which targets museums' diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, resulting in a federal funding cut of $1.7 million from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities. William T. Fujioka, chair of the museum's board of trustees has responded, "And so now we feel it’s even more important to tell our story and to stand up and to support other marginalized communities who are being subjected to this gross injustice, violation of civil rights, due process, and everything that actually occurred to our community in 1942."

Exhibits

The museum has three on-going exhibitions. The Interactive StoryFile of Lawson Iichiro Sakai is an interactive exhibition in which Lawson has answered a thousand questions regarding himself and his legacy. Common Ground: The Heart of Community, covers 130 years of Japanese American history, from the Issei and early immigration into the United States, World War II incarceration, to the present. Lastly, Wakaji Matsumoto—An Artist in Two Worlds: Los Angeles and Hiroshima, 1917–1944 is an online exhibition featuring photographs of the Japanese American community in Los Angeles prior to World War II and of urban life in Hiroshima prior to the 1945 atomic bombing of the city.

Selected previous exhibitions

  • Glenn Kaino: Aki’s ''Market
  • Don't fence me in: Coming of Age in America’s Concentration Camps
  • Sutra and Bible: Faith and the Japanese American World War II Incarceration
  • BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration
  • Miné Okubo's Masterpiece: The Art of Citizen 13660
  • A Life In Pieces: The Diary and Letters of Stanley Hayami
  • Under a Mushroom Cloud: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Atomic Bomb
  • Taiji Terasaki: Transcendients
  • At First Light
  • Kaiju Vs. Heroes
  • Gambatte!
  • hapa.me: 15 years of the hapa project
  • What We Carried
  • Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of the Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Saõ Paulo
  • New Frontiers: The Many Worlds of George Takei
  • Instructions to All Persons: Reflections on Executive Order 9066
  • Tatau: Marks of Polynesia
  • Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps During World War II
  • Above the Fold: New Expressions in Origami
  • Making Waves: Japanese American Photography 1920-1940
  • Hello! Exploring the Supercute World of Hello Kitty
  • Two Views: Photographs by Ansel Adams and Leonard Frank
  • Giant Robot Biennale 4
  • Before They Were Heroes: Sus Ito's World War II Images
  • Sugar/ Islands: Finding Okinawa in Hawai'i - The Art of Laura Kina and Emily Hanako Momohara
  • Dodgers: Brotherhood of the Game
  • Perseverance: Japanese Tattoo Tradition in a Modern World
  • Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986
  • Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami
  • Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activism in Post-War Los Angeles
  • Year of the Rabbit: Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo
  • No Victory Ever Stays Won: The ACLU's 90 Years of Protecting Liberty
  • Mixed: Portraits of Multiracial Kids by Kip Fulbeck
  • 20 Years Ago Today: Supporting Visual Artists in L.A.
  • Glorious Excess : Paintings by Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda
  • Living Flowers: Ikebana and Contemporary Art
  • Southern California Gardeners' Federation: Fifty Years
  • Boyle Heights: The Power of Place
  • Sumo U.S.A.: Wrestling the Grand Tradition
  • Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp''

    Major projects

Completed in 2022, the Ireichō is the first comprehensive listing of the over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. A physical book was printed and displayed at the museum for internees and their friends and family to acknowledge, honor, and if necessary, correct the record within the database. Discover Nikkei, a multilingual, online resource that presents the global Nikkei experience through first-person narratives, historic photos and research, and opportunities for user engagement. The museum's International Nikkei Research Project produced the book New Worlds, New Lives.

Additional images

Management

Ann Burroughs serves as the President and Chief Executive Officer of the museum.
The museum's board of trustees includes former Los Angeles County Chief Executive Officer William T. Fujioka and actor George Takei. George Takei represented the museum as his charity during his time on The Celebrity Apprentice and during his appearance on The Newlywed Game.