CSU Archives Collaborate to Document Japanese American Incarceration in California

Archives at 15 California State University campuses -- including Sacramento, Sonoma, San Jose, San Francisco and East Bay in Northern California -- are collaborating to digitize nearly 10,000 documents and more than 100 oral histories related to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, university officials announced Monday.

The National Park Service recently awarded a two-year $321,554 grant to Cal State Dominguez Hills, which is serving as the principal investigator for the CSU Japanese American Digitization Project. The project will make these materials available on a CSU-sponsored website and result in a teaching guide and traveling exhibit for schools and
the public.

“It is heartening to have the National Park Service acknowledge the scale and importance of the CSU’s collections,” said Cal State Dominguez Hills Director of Archives and Special Collections Greg Williams. ”The grant will ensure that this significant part of our history can be studied for generations to come.’’

Many campuses throughout the Cal State system were located near California’s internment camps and Japanese American communities.

Throughout the last half century, their archives, libraries, oral history projects and history departments have collected archival and manuscript materials, objects, and media relating to Japanese internment that have yet to
be digitized.

With the grant money, participating California State University archives at Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento, San Jose, San Bernardino, San
Diego, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco and Sonoma will digitize and catalog their records.

PHOTOS clockwise from top: Gary and Nancy Fujita at Granada (Amache) Incarceration Camp. More information; Roy, Honey, Akira, Sept. 1942, Manzanar Internment Camp. More information; Lorraine Paulson, Miriko Nagahama, Honey Toda, Wilda Johnson, and Betty Salzman at Manzanar Internment Camp, 1942. More information.

--City News Service