Amache Digitization Project

FAIN: PY-234249-16

California State University (Rohnert Park, CA 94928-3609)
Adrian Praetzellis (Project Director: June 2015 to April 2017)

A one-day digitization event to be held at the Sonoma County Japanese American Citizens’ League for former internees of the Amache Japanese internment camp located near Granada, Colorado, and their descendants. Digitization would be organized by staff of Sonoma State University’s Anthropological Studies Center (ASC); items to be digitized would include photographs, documents, posters, and three-dimensional objects. Audiovisual materials would be digitized off-site at the ASC. Scanned images would reside in the Amache Museum’s digital image collection; many would also be available to the public on the Amache Preservation Society website. Public programming would be centered on the theme of art and creativity, and would consider the objects of beauty created by internees in such difficult circumstances. Programming would consist of an art exhibition of digitized images five months after the digitization day, and a presentation by co-directors of the digitization project on research at Amache before it.

The documents, photographs, artwork, and other mementos and artifacts created at Colorado’s WWII internment camp, Amache, are cherished by the Amache community—a multi-generational population linked by their ties to the incarceration of people of Japanese descent. These objects represent the resilience, creativity, and ingenuity of the internees and provide insights into their experiences. The Amache Digitization Project will preserve and share the experiences and heritage of the Amache community. The Project will digitally preserve these tangible objects of heritage so that descendants can distribute and cherish them for generations to come and the public can appreciate the lessons and insights they contain. Public programming will highlight the topic of art and creativity behind barbed wire by exhibiting particularly evocative items in a gallery as well as online. This will allow them to be recognized and valued as important pieces of art while celebrating the stories and legacies of the people who created them.