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Closed for Renovations

JANM’s Pavilion is closed for renovation and will reopen in late 2026. While the museum and store are closed, join us for programs and events on our Little Tokyo campus, throughout Southern California, and beyond. 

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  • Temporary Detention: A New Multimedia Project About “Assembly Centers”

    May 10, 2025

    Commemorate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with the launch of the new multimedia project, Temporary Detention: A Guide to the Forced “Assembly Centers.” The website provides a past-and-present look at the fifteen temporary detention centers and the Owens Valley “Reception Center” operated by the US Army’s Western Civil Control Administration during World War II. Euphemistically c...

  • Virtual Book Launch: In Search of Hiroshi with Gene Oishi

    Jun 06, 2024

    Join author Gene Oishi, his daughter Eve Oishi, and scholar Koji Lau-Ozawa to celebrate Oishi’s newly revised 1988 work, In Search of Hiroshi—a powerful memoir about his lifelong struggle to claim both his Japanese and American identities in the aftermath of World War II. About the Book“Can one wreak vengeance against oneself?”This anguished question hangs over Gene Oishi’s powerful memoir about his lifelong struggl...

  • JANM Mourns the Passing of Hisako Terasaki

    Apr 25, 2024

    LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) mourns the recent passing of Nisei artist Hisako Terasaki. Born to Shuichi and Chizu Sumioka, she and her sister, Tokiko, grew up in Boyle Heights where her family ran a flower shop. The Sumiokas were incarcerated at the Poston concentration camp in Arizona. During the postwar years, they lived and worked apart from each other to help their family become ...

  • JANM Mourns the Passing of Sakaye Aratani

    Apr 02, 2024

    LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) mourns Sakaye Aratani, who passed away on March 18, 2024. Aratani grew up in Gardena, where her parents ran a chicken farm. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, her family lived with relatives in Reedley, California before being forcibly removed to the Poston concentration camp in Arizona. While visiting another camp she met her future husband, George, and they ...

  • JANM Digital Film Festival: "Masters of Modern Design"

    May 24, 2020

    FREE Join us as we dive into films produced by the Japanese American National Museum’s Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center! We will be releasing a selection of films, some for a limited time only. Organize a (virtual) screening party with your friends or family or just get cozy and enjoy the JANM Digital Film Festival from the safety of your own home. We will also have Q&A sessions with the filmmakers and others inv...

  • Contested Histories at National Museum of American History (Washington, DC)

    Feb 19, 2020

    TRAVELING DISPLAY National Museum of American History Washington, DC 10 a.m.–5:30 p.m. FREE and open to the public* Allen Hendershott Eaton’s historic 1952 book, Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps, explored art and craft objects created by persons of Japanese descent while wrongfully incarcerated in the World War II American concentration camps. It was on...

  • DISCOVER NIKKEI CALLS FOR STORIES OF NIKKEI HEROES

    May 20, 2019

    Los Angeles, CA—Discover Nikkei, a multi-lingual online resource of the Japanese American National Museum, has launched the eighth edition of Nikkei Chronicles, an annual theme-driven online journal with an open call for writings. This year’s theme is Nikkei Heroes: Trailblazers, Role Models, and Inspirations. “Hero” can mean different things to different people. Perhaps it’s a relative that someone admires or loo...

  • KRISTINA MCMORRIS, AUTHOR OF 'BRIDGE OF SCARLET LEAVES' TO SPEAK AT JANM ON JULY 14

    Jul 06, 2012

    Kristina McMorris, author of the novel Bridge of Scarlet Leaves, will read from her book and speak at a public program set for the Japanese American National Museum on Saturday, July 14, beginning at 2 p.m. Bridge of Scarlet Leaves begins in 1941 when young Maddie Kern secretly elopes with her Japanese American boy friend, Lane Moritomo. Besides the turmoil created in both families over the inter-racial union (whi...

  • Good Food, Classic Recipes & the Remarkable Story of Hawai‘i’s Mixed Plate

    Aug 15, 2010

    Special Book Talk & Signing of Kau Kau: Cuisine and Culture in the Hawaiian Islands Kau kau: It’s the all-purpose pidgin word for food, probably derived from the Chinese “chow chow.” On Hawai‘i’s sugar and pineapple plantations, kau kau came to encompass the amazing range of foods brought to the Islands by immigrant laborers from East and West: Japanese, Portuguese, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Koreans and others. On...

  • AUTHOR OF 'SOLDIERS OF CONSCIENCE' TO SPEAK AT MUSEUM ON NOVEMBER 1

    Oct 29, 2008

    Dr. Shirley Castelnuovo will discuss her book, Soldiers of Conscience: Japanese American Military Resisters in World War II, in a public program set for the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo, on Saturday, November 1, beginning at 2 p.m. During World War II, the U.S. government unconstitutionally forced over 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry from their homes, mostly on the West Coast and parts ...