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.)
Related to this Collection
A Life in Pieces
Items in this collection were 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.
Stanley Hayami: Nisei Son—His Diary, Letters, & Story
Annotated by Joanne Oppenheim. Foreword by Senator Daniel Inouye. His story “beyond the diary” is told through his recently found letters, from interviews with family, friends, and brothers in arms. The foreword is written by his platoon leader, Daniel Inouye, who fought with Stanley during the last days of the war in Europe.