Stanley Hayami Diary

Stanley Hayami Diary

(95.226) Stanley Hayami (1925-1945) was a student from Los Angeles who attended high school at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp in Wyoming. Hayami left Heart Mountain in June 1944 to join the U.S. Army and was killed in combat in Northern Italy on April 23, 1945, while trying to help a fellow soldier. He was nineteen years old. This diary, which Hayami kept from 1941 to 1944, records a spectrum of youthful dreams of becoming an artist-writer and doubts ranging from the quality of his schoolwork to the meaning of democracy. The diary also includes pen and ink drawings by Hayami. (View diary through the Online Archive of California.)

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Image of hourglass diary scene in A Life in Pieces: The Diary and Letters of Stanley Hayami

A Life in Pieces

Items in this collection are featured in the exhibition, A Life in Pieces: The Diary and Letters of Stanley Hayami, on display at JANM, July 9, 2021 – January 9, 2022.

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