JANM Statement on Hate Crime in Colorado

Editors please note: JANM’s Pavilion is closed for renovation; programs will continue on the JANM campus and at other locations at janm.org/OnTheGo. 

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) condemns the antisemitic attack on peaceful demonstrators in Boulder, Colorado, on Sunday. 

“Our hearts go out to the victims and the community that experienced this hateful attack. JANM condemns violence in all its forms and hopes that this act does not spark further antisemitic and anti-Arab/Palestinian sentiments that have been on the rise.

“We reiterate what we have previously stated: The Japanese American community are no strangers to racial profiling and the consequences of being seen as ‘the enemy.’ JANM’s campus sits on the very site where over 37,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to report and board buses bound for concentration camps in 1942—part of the mass forced removal and unjust incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese American families during World War II. JANM is a literal and symbolic ground zero point in the civil rights history of this country. This history gives JANM not only the right, but the responsibility, to speak out when diversity, individual dignity, and social justice are undermined, for this community knows that silence in the face of injustice is complicity,” said Ann Burroughs, JANM’s President and CEO.

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