This five-part seminar features Dr. Mitchell T. Maki, Acting Dean, College of Health and Human Services, California State University, Los Angeles, and author of Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress, in conversation with noted scholars, activists, and artists as they respond to propaganda artifacts displayed in the exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community. This session will examine the period covering the late nineteenth century through the Great Depression era and include comments by Akemi Kikumura-Yano, PhD?, National Museum Senior Vice President, author of Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman, and curator of the National Museum's inaugural exhibit Issei Pioneers: Hawai`i and the Mainland 1885 - 1924.

In this second of a five-part seminar features Dr. Mitchell T. Maki, Acting Dean, College of Health and Human Services, California State University, Los Angeles, and author of Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress, in conversation with noted scholars, activists, and artists as they respond to propaganda artifacts displayed in the exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community. This session will examine the World War II period with actor George Takei. Mr. Takei was incarcerated in the Jerome and Tule Lake Concentration Camps. In his autobiography, To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu, he writes how this odyssey propelled him to become and actor, writer, businessman and politically active individual.

Please note: Actor Pat Morita was originally scheduled to be part of this discussion. Unfortunately he sends his regrets as he's been called to service - he will be the emcee for a major welcome home of troops from Iraq in Honolulu.

In this third of five sessions, we continue our examination of selected propaganda artifacts displayed in the exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community featuring Dr. Mitchell T. Maki, Acting Dean, College of Health and Human Services at California State University, Los Angeles to reflect on propaganda prevalent during the resettlement era post-World War II. He will consider what lessons we can learn from the past to address current attempts to defend the incarceration of Japanese Americans and justify assaults on civil liberties.

In this fourth of five sessions that examines ways propaganda has been used to perpetuate negative ethnic images and stereotypes, Dr. Mitchell Maki is joined by Johnn y Mori from the groundbreaking band Hiroshima. During the 1970s, the band impressed the music scene with jazz that effortlessly integrated East and West. Their music, as well as their commitment to the communities in which it was born, speak volumes about the ability of artists--and the arts--to subvert ethnic stereotypes and bridge cultures.

This collection of essays outlines how the National Museum operates in collaboration with other institutions, museums, researchers, audiences, and funders. Authors will speak on their case studies which explore collaboration with community-oriented partners in order to document, interpret, and present their histories and experiences and provide a new understanding of what museums can and should be in the United States. Book signing to follow.

The last session in this seminar reflects on propaganda post-September 11 using select objects in the exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community. Guest speaker to be announced.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with our experienced and knowledgeable docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Take a fun and educational family friendly tour of Common Ground: Heart of a Community. This tour is designed to make history come alive for the whole family.

Other Family Events at the National Museum

September 12 – Target Family Free Saturday: Crafty!

October 10 – Target Family Free Saturday: Toy Shoppe!

October 10: A Special Reading of Be Water, My Friend by Ken Mochizuki

October 17: Fall into JANM Comfort Foods Cooking Workshop

November 14 – Target Family Free Saturday: Merry Melodies

December 5: Winter Family Breakfast Feast Cooking Workshop>

December 12 – Target Family Free Saturday: Let's Celebrate!

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

In 1994, the Japanese American National Museum staff and volunteers organized a project to travel to Heart Mountain, Wyoming to take apart and bring back to Los Angeles two fragments of original barracks buildings built by the U.S. government to house Japanese Americans unfairly imprisoned during World War II. The project was part of the National Museum’s landmark exhibition, America’s Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience, and the display of the Heart Mountain barracks building became the symbol of the unconstitutional mass incarceration of over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.

The project, organized by Museum staff member Nancy Araki and former Heart Mountain inmate Bacon Sakatani, included dozens of former inmates and interested parties who traveled over 1,000 miles or more to take part in the dismantling. To recall the historic events, the program will include the screening of the award winning documentary, “Legacy of the Barracks”, produced by Mark Mohr for KABC-TV Channel 7 in 1994.

Also on hand will be other key participants, including Ron Mukai, whose father Tomo lived in the barracks fragment still on display at the Museum; Sakatani; Araki; contractor David Honda; author Sharon Yamato, who, along with her cousins, took part in the dismantling, and then wrote a book on her experiences, Moving Walls: Preserving the Barracks of America’s Concentration Camps; and, preservation architect Jim McElwain, who oversaw the logistics of the dismantling and the reassembly in Los Angeles.

Following the program, a reception will be held adjacent to the Heart Mountain barracks in the National Museum’s Pavilion.

[Purchase a copy of Moving Walls: Preserving the Barracks of America's Concentration Camps at the Museum Store Online]

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.

Tour our ongoing exhibition Common Ground: Heart of a Community with experienced docents.