Tomoko Bialock, MLIS

Please join us for light refreshments as we kick off the weekend with a welcome reception.

Created by incarcerees themselves at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, the Tule Lake Japanese Library consisted of thousands of books. A large proportion of the library holdings made their way to UCLA, where they were entered into general circulation until Tomoko Bialock, Japanese Studies Librarian at the UCLA East Asian Library, recognized them for the treasures that they are. Tomoko is eager to share this collection with descendant communities of Tule Lake and other camps, and will be on site to showcase a number of actual books from the new Tule Lake Japanese Library Collection.

Annual meeting for JACSC Stakeholders, including a review of organizational finances, staffing, and of the educational conference.

Continental breakfast provided.

Ann Burroughs, Dr. Emily Anderson, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams

All conference attendees are invited to join for opening remarks from Ann Burroughs, Dr. Emily Anderson, and Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams.

Aura Newlin, Marlene Shigekawa, Robyn Achilles

This session focuses on current projects at Heart Mountain, Minidoka, and Poston to preserve the stories of the wartime incarceration in both material terms and in the creation of new ways of storytelling. With well- established pilgrimages at the three sites, the speakers will present most recent efforts serve not only the survivor and descendant communities at regular intervals, but build enduring structures of memory and remembrances at the former confinement sites.

On your own in Little Tokyo.

Dr. Ran Zwigenberg, Dr. Colleen Murphy, Dr. Rachel Deblinger

As the effort capture memories, recover histories, and establish monuments continues, this panel invites scholars whose work and research address conceptually similar issues in different communities. From questions of how justice is experienced and sought, to the challenges of capturing memories and what they mean, to the ways that what is memorialized changes meaning over time, this session seeks to expand the discussion around how we remember and honor the past.

Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams; Jeffrey Mansfield; Sunyoung Lee

This session features a presentation by Jeffrey Mansfield, the director of MASS Design’s memorialization projects, which include the National Memorial for Peace and Justice (the Lynching Memorial) in Alabama, who will share the firm’s philosophy and process for creating monuments followed by a talk by Duncan Ryuken Williams, the founder of the Irei Monument project, about the significance of names and the theory of monument-making behind the making of the Ireicho (book of names), the Ireizo (online archive), and the Ireihi (the installations slated to be placed at a number of former WWII confinement sites). Sunyoung Lee will join the conversation as the Irei Project’s creative director, speaking to why the form of a book as a monument challenges traditional notions of the value of monument and how various design choices were made. The session will cover themes such as community involvement in monument-making, collecting soil, and the notion of monuments as ongoing acts of repairing the racial karma of America.

Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams

The rediscovery of the Wakasa Monument at the Topaz concentration camp rewrites the narrative of the camps. An unauthorized, 2,000-pound boulder was erected by defiant issei at the spot where their 63-year-old friend was shot through the chest by a watchtower military guard in 1943. Although the monument site is not where James Hatsuaki Wakasa was buried, the memorial has come to symbolize a sacred gravestone. It is physical evidence of the courage and agency of the issei in the face of military authority and the trauma endured by those incarcerated. Arguably, it is the most important Japanese American civil rights monument of all the camps.

Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams

The Ireicho contains the first comprehensive listing of over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in US Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority camps. Embedded into the very materiality of the Ireich are special ceramic pieces made from soil collected by the project from seventy-five former incarceration sites from Alaska to Hawai‘i, Arkansas to California, and from almost every other region of the United States.

Tom Leatherman, Kara Miyagishima, Rachel Franklin-Weekley

The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 established a new competitive grant category, the Norman Y. Mineta Japanese American Confinement Education Grants, to be administered through the current Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program. These new grants, referred to as Japanese American Confinement Education or JACE Grants, will be awarded to Japanese American Organizations who promote the understanding and appreciation of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the United States by illustrating the Japanese American experience throughout the history of the United States.

The legislation establishing these new grants provides some general parameters for this new category, and we are seeking public comments to help us better understand the perspectives of the larger community in the development of grant guidelines. In order to answer questions you might have about this new category of grants we will be hosting a general information session to give a brief overview of the enabling legislation and provide a forum for you to ask questions about the development of the guidelines.

Continental breakfast provided.

Dr. Satsuki Ina; Mayrah Udvardi, Brent Kleinjan, Brian Niiya

A session featuring key representatives from the Japanese American community, the Native American community, and the MASS Design group, who have been working closely for years to tell the story of the Fort Lincoln (Bismarck) Internment Camp. Known as the Snow Country Prison Japanese American Memorial, the collaborative project recently marked the official launch of the building of a monument on the site of the former DOJ internment camp and current campus of the United Tribes Technical College. The session will cover the collaborative process in designing the monument given how this site represents multiple layers of history that is deeply meaningful to both the Japanese and Native American communities.

Bentos provided.

Dr. Kristen Hayashi, June Aochi Berk

During the first JACSC Conference, we introduced the new StoryFiles project. In this panel, actual participants in the process share their thoughts on what this project means to them and what they seek to accomplish through StoryFiles.

Brian Niiya

An evolution of Densho’s popular Sites of Shame project, Manzanar CloseUp applies similar data extraction and visualization tools to one concentration camp, illustrating both geographical and population based features of the camp down to the barrack level. Densho Content Director Brian Niiya will provide a preview of the site, which will officially launch in the coming months.

Glenn Kaino, Clement Hanami

Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is inspired by Akira and Sachiye Shiraishi’s small neighborhood market (1957–1970) in East Los Angeles. Created by artist Glenn Akira Kaino (Akira’s grandson and namesake), the exhibition explores the transgenerational trauma from the World War II Japanese American incarceration experience through the stories of Kaino, his family, and the community. It is also an interrogation of the American practice of displacement—collapsing almost 100 years of cultural subjugation into a spiritual, exploratory space from which the building blocks of peace might be discovered.

The exhibition draws from the life of Kaino’s grandfather, Akira Shiraishi, a legendary high school football player who was unable to realize his dreams of attending Occidental College when he was incarcerated at the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming. Upon returning to East LA after the war, he and Sachiye dedicated their lives to building their market on the corner of Blanchard Street and Geraghty Avenue—a multicultural anchor that served the Japanese and Hispanic communities.

Kaino only knew his grandfather through family stories. To recreate the market, he pulled from his artistic toolkit and used his skill of unlocking past memories through layered conversations (as in his work with historical figures like Olympian, Tommie Smith). He used this methodology to draw out family memories and paint a full picture of the place they called “The Store.”

Through a virtual reality recreation of the store and an installation of related works, Glenn Kaino: Aki’s Market is an exhibition about collective memory where the archival bleeds into the imaginary and where the most advanced technology serves the most personal past.

All conference attendees are invited to gather together for a reflective discussion about the weekend’s key takeaways.

Nancy Ukai, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Williams The Ireicho contains the first comprehensive listing of over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry who were incarcerated in US Army, Department of Justice, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and War Relocation Authority camps. Embedded into the very materiality of the Ireicho are special ceramic pieces made from soil collected by the project from seventy-five former incarceration sites from Alaska to Hawai‘i, Arkansas to California, and from almost every other region of the United States.

Glenn Kaino, Dr. Emily Anderson

Join Dr. Emily Anderson, curator of Don’t Fence Me In and artist Glenn Kaino, creator of Aki’s Market for behind-the-scenes guided tours of JANM’s current featured exhibitions.