FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - December 2, 2022

PRESS CONTACTS:

Media Relations - mediarelations@janm.org - 213.830.5690

JANM

The Japanese American National Museum Receives $503,877 from Two Japanese American Confinement Sites Grants


LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) has received $327,974 for Preserving America’s Community Treasures (PACT): The Toyo Miyatake Collection and $175,903 for Eating Together: Food in Japanese America, two grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program. 

The $327,974 JACS grant for Preserving America’s Community Treasures (PACT): The Toyo Miyatake Collection will support the collaboration between JANM and Toyo Miyatake Studio to evaluate, curate, digitize, catalog, and present the Toyo Miyatake Photographic Collection on the Museum’s website as a digital collection. With this grant, JANM will help reveal how wartime incarceration completely upended the lives of Japanese Americans. The digital collection is slated to be available online in 2025.

Eating Together: Food in Japanese America will be an experiential exhibition that focuses on what food was like in Japanese American incarceration facilities during World War II. Through photographs, artifacts, multimedia, and interviews with the Sansei, this exhibition will investigate how incarcerees remembered their food experiences, how Issei and Nisei transmitted their knowledge and memories of food to younger generations, and how wartime incarceration shaped the way food was consumed and understood postwar. JANM will also work with community partners to create public programs exploring Japanese American food culture, including during the wartime incarceration.The exhibition is slated to open in 2024.

“We are so grateful for the opportunities these grants have given us to uncover these diverse stories and highlight the many significant ways Japanese Americans have impacted and shaped this nation’s culture and histories. With this generous support, JANM will provide a unique perspective on Japanese American food before, during, and after World War II; and present snapshots of life at Manzanar that have never been seen by the public. These exhibitions engage the public in new ways and continue to deepen our understanding of how World War II incarceration and the broader Japanese American experience continues to influence and impact us today,” said Ann Burroughs, President and CEO.

###

About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)

Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories and strives to provide a voice for Japanese Americans as well as a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 70 exhibitions onsite while traveling 17 exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.