Uncovering Hidden History: WWII Internment of Japanese Latin Americans

FAIN: GE-50896-14

NJAHS (San Francisco, CA 94115-3604)
Grace Shimizu (Project Director: January 2014 to October 2015)

Planning a digital museum and nationwide public dialogues on the imprisonment of Japanese Latin Americans in U.S. internment camps during World War II.

The Hidden History project seeks to develop a digital museum and nationwide public dialogues on the imprisonment of Japanese Latin Americans in United States internment camps during World War II. The interactive, online museum will provide a dynamic introduction to the Japanese Latin American wartime experience and the discussion program will foster dialogue on the museum’s central themes: upholding civil liberties and human rights while maintaining national security, the vulnerability of immigrants in moments of crisis and war, and the importance of the historic hemispheric race-based ideologies that shaped the inter-related Japanese American and Latin American internment programs. This project will ensure that this wartime history is accessible to broad audiences as well as lay a foundation for further inquiry into enemy alien experiences in the past and the protection of civil and human rights in the present.