I recently got a chance to sit down with JANM’s new Chief Impact Officer, Kenyon Mayeda, to talk about what he has learned so far on his own professional journey and advice he has for young professionals as they navigate their own careers.
During the summer of his first year at the University of San Francisco, he was accepted into the Nikkei Community Internship program, a paid two-month internship program for undergraduate students to gain valuable work experience, establish their network, and meet leaders in the Japanese American community. He was placed in JANM’s Development department, where he was able to make connections with other Japantown leaders and executive directors.
“In particular Jon Osaki was really trying to see how I could get more involved with the Japanese Community Youth Council in the Japantown up there. That was a really formative experience for me as a jump-off point from going to the internship working at JANM to continuing to do the work and working with kids at JCYC,” said Mayeda. “You really have to take initiative and be a self-starter, especially in community organizations. It was an interesting experience to be at an intersection of my own personal identity and history and learn how to work in a professional environment.”
Upon graduating college, he lived and worked in San Francisco’s Japantown, where he discovered a need for boundaries between his personal and professional lives.
“I was spending so much of my personal time in Japantown. I was so intent and motivated to learn about the issues that were going on in the neighborhood that I sort of forgot to take care of myself,” he said. “When I found myself at an intersection of burnout, I really had to make a choice to see if I could explore another facet both of my own identity and continue to learn professionally about different environments.”
His decision led him to work at Cathay Bank, where he made his way from trainee to overseeing the bank’s regional branches in Seattle. Over time, he settled into the city and was able to connect community organizations’ issues, projects, and programs with the bank’s resources. While in Seattle, he also learned the importance of volunteering at the community level to discover and better understand who was being served by community organizations.
“Once I started volunteering it really fast tracked me to meeting folks that grew up there and I think that was a really important milestone. There’s something called the Seattle freeze, where it’s notoriously difficult to get a social network of people in Seattle. I can attest that it’s pretty true. In the early years of me being there I really only interacted with other California transplants but after I started doing more community work and I participated in a leadership development program that was planted in Chinatown International District, that’s when my network really opened up to meeting folks that had spent their whole lives in the area and knew a lot about the history and the community.”
With a deep knowledge and understanding of West Coast communities, he transitioned into marketing and advertising at TDW+Co where he applied a community-minded perspective to strategies that helped clients make authentic connections with communities. One of those examples he gave was the work that the agency did as part of Team Y&R, the advertising and communications team of thirteen agencies who have worked with multicultural and historically undercounted groups, for the 2020 Census’s “Shape Your Future. Start Here.” advertising campaign.
“It’s such a critical issue to count everyone here in the United States and activate in these communities where nonprofits and other community organizations can see the critical importance of ensuring accurate population numbers are guiding budgeting and funding decisions that support the Asian American community.”
He rose from senior account executive to vice president of operations and established the agency’s Los Angeles branch on 2nd Street, just two blocks away from JANM.
“Surprisingly, when I came back I sort of came home in several different ways. I came home because of the physical city I grew up in but I also came home in the sense that I was hired to open and expand this agency. I knew that because they started in Chinatown International District in Seattle and I knew and learned the identity of that neighborhood. I knew that the closest possible community to that experience and that level of connection was Little Tokyo.”
Today, Mayeda brings over twenty years of leadership, strategy, and institution-wide performance and impact to his current work with JANM and he continues to hone his leadership experience through board service including the Chinese Information Service Center, the California Japanese American Community Leadership Council, and the US-Japan Council, where he is the Southern California regional chair.
“As the chief impact officer, thinking about things in the long range format is really to think about how we can continue to deepen those connections in public places. We are the Japanese American National Museum, so for me it’s about really considering how we bolster the conditions of a national Japanese American community when we are very much an institution at a local level in LA that’s very familiar and known. Then there’s the international layer of it where we consider how we’ve been forging sister museum relationships with the Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama as well as considering how we can grow our connections with Japanese companies because there is interest in Japanese Americans and the Japanese American experience which is at the core of our mission at the Museum.”
Images from top left:
The 2004 class of the Nikkei Community Internship program. Photo courtesy of NCI program via Discover Nikkei.
Kenyon interning in JANM’s Development department in 2004. Photo courtesy of Kenyon Mayeda.
Kenyon today as JANM’s Chief Impact Officer. Photo courtesy of Kenyon Mayeda.
This summer, Getty Marrow undergraduate interns from JANM, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles collaborated to create a collections-based project tasked with answering the question:
How have immigrants and subsequent generations shaped what it means to be American?
The initial goal of the project was to highlight the agency of immigrants in shaping American identity. However, the interns’ submissions suggested that the answer to this specific question would not fully encapsulate the American experience of immigrants and their descendants. As a result, each intern approached this question from a different perspective and highlighted an artifact that touched upon different facets of the American experience and identity. In this post, Mercedes Solaberrieta and Jose Quirarte explore the historic vulnerability of American immigrants to systematic and de facto discrimination in the United States by highlighting the experiences of two immigrants during World War II.
Interns Mercedes Solaberrieta of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles and Jose Quirarte of JANM selected items that highlight the complexity of the American immigrant experience by demonstrating the vulnerability and discrimination that many immigrants to the United States have faced due to their ethnicity or country of origin. Mercedes selected a 1940s parole document of an Italian immigrant named Filippo Fordellone and Jose highlighted a 1942 diary entry of Gihachi Yamashita, a Japanese immigrant.
Due to America’s involvement in World War II fighting against the Axis Powers, which included Japan and Italy, both of these immigrant men were considered enemy aliens and stripped of their civil liberties because of war hysteria and racial prejudice. Both Yamashita and Fordellone were unjustly arrested by the FBI after the attacks on Pearl Harbor and imprisoned at Fort Missoula, Montana without due process. Additionally, Fordellone and Yamashita were impacted by Executive Order 9066 and the subsequent strict curfews and travel restrictions placed upon individuals of Japanese and Italian descent. Fordellone and Yamashita were both vulnerable as immigrants, recognized as enemy aliens due to their country of origin, unjustly arrested, and imprisoned far from their homes. Although the experiences of Fordellone and Yamashita are unique to context of WWII, their stories still demonstrate the greater historic relationship between vulnerability and discrimination that has largely characterized the American experience for immigrant populations.
Filippo Fordellone’s Parole Document
Contributed by: Mercedes Solaberrieta, Italian American Museum of Los Angeles
Filippo Fordellone’s Parole Document, U.S. Department of Justice, 1943. From the collection of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles.
Fordellone was among the Italian Americans interned during World War II. Today the words “Italian” and “Italian American” are often associated with one of the nation’s favorite cuisines, high fashion, and family-centered cultures. This was not always the case. The United States has had a long history of anti-Italianism, including discriminatory laws, and hostility directed at Italian Americans reached another peak during World War II.
Born in Italy in 1890, Filippo Fordellone immigrated to the United States in 1926. He became a prominent radio broadcaster and was well known in the Italian American community. When Italy joined the Axis powers and the United States involvement in World War II became increasingly imminent, the U.S. government began compiling a list of Italians (as well as Germans and Japanese) living in the United States and its territories that it considered threats to American security. Following the nation’s entry into World War II, the U.S. government declared 600,000 Italian residents of the United States who had not yet become American citizens “enemy aliens.” President Roosevelt issued Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527, which authorized the United States to detain potentially dangerous “enemy aliens.” He also signed Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of persons from specified areas in the interest of national security.
In the case of the so-called Italian enemy aliens, many had lived in the United States for years and had children and grandchildren serving in the U.S. military. They were elderly and had been unable to pass the citizenship exam because of their limited literacy. Enemy aliens were required to register with the U.S. government and carry identification cards. They were subject to curfews and travel restrictions, and many were forced to evacuate their homes and surrender property. Some Italian “enemy aliens” were arrested and sent to internment camps. In the end, thousands of German nationals would also be interned and over 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans, many of whom were U.S. citizens, were forcibly relocated and incarcerated.
Although Fordellone had committed no crime, he was deemed a threat because as a prominent journalist, he was capable of influencing others. This was the case with many of the Italian Americans interned or threatened with internment, including baseball great Joe DiMaggio’s father. The FBI arrested Fordellone shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and transported him to an internment camp in Fort Missoula, Montana, where he remained for 14 months. Most arrestees were never informed of the charges against them or allowed legal counsel. While Fordellone was imprisoned, his wife Alessandra was left alone to care for their three children without any financial support, as the couple’s assets were frozen. For most of her husband’s confinement she had no idea as to where he was being held.
Fordellone’s parole document, which was executed in May of 1943, dictated the terms of his conditional release. Notice that it does not contain any mention of a conviction for any crime. Fordellone’s only crime was being Italian.
Although the civil liberty violations Italian Americans experienced during World War II were not as severe or widespread as the trauma and injustices inflicted on the Japanese and Japanese American community, the experience nonetheless left the Italian American community scarred. Many stopped speaking the Italian language and distanced themselves from their culture and heritage in an effort to appear more “American.”
Fordellone’s experience reflects the process through which Italian Americans gained acceptance in the United States. Italians were often seen as despised immigrants and “others” whose loyalty was subsequently called into question during World War II before eventually achieving acceptance as white ethnics. Today, Italian Americans are mostly considered to be “white,” but the process was not straightforward.
Photograph of Fillipo Fordellone, from the collection of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles.
January 22, 1942, Diary Entry Written by Gihachi Yamashita
Contributed by: Jose Quirarte, Japanese American National Museum
Diary of Gihachi Yamashita, Missoula Justice Department Camp, 1942-45. Gift of the Gihachi and Tsugio Yamashita Family (94.166.1), Japanese American National Museum.
Gihachi Yamashita documented his experience the day after the Pearl Harbor attacks in his personal diary, writing: “this is a day I will never be able to forget.” On December 8, 1941, at around 1:30 a.m., Yamashita was “shaken awake” and arrested by FBI agents. Yamashita was one of the many Japanese Americans who was targeted and arrested immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor due to a faulty presumption that the Japanese living on the West Coast of the U.S. were dangerous. Many of those who were arrested were already being monitored before the war because of the U.S. government’s false belief that they were potentially dangerous due to their connections to Japanese institutions. Most of the Japanese Americans who were unjustly arrested after the Pearl Harbor attacks were well-respected or important contributing members of their communities.
Following his arrest, Yamashita was imprisoned and moved around to a variety of concentration camps operated by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Meanwhile, his wife and two daughters were forced to sell their property and move to the Santa Anita temporary detention center due to Executive Order 9066, which forced the removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast into concentration camps. Yamashita’s wife and two daughters stayed at Santa Anita until being transferred to the Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas. Yamashita’s diary entry tells the harrowing story of his arrest and removal to Fort Missoula, a Department of Justice internment camp in Missoula, Montana, but it also revealed how being excluded from the definition of “an American” led to losing his right to due process, and more generally, his “unalienable rights.”
Yamashita wrote about his experience of being arrested and taken in for questioning by the FBI in his personal diary. He noted that while he was imprisoned, his wife and daughter visited him twice and a guard watched over their conversation (which had to be in English). Yamashita detailed the entirety of his forced removal and wrote that on December 8th he was initially detained at Lincoln Heights Jail for four days, from December 12th to the 22nd he was imprisoned at a county jail, and on the afternoon of the 22nd was held at the Tuna Canyon Camp in Los Angeles for two days before he arrived at Fort Missoula on December 28th. Yamashita concluded his entry by writing about the brutal living conditions of the camp, noting that he and the other Japanese prisoners weren’t given an opportunity to prepare for the Montana winter and were forced to endure the freezing temperatures of Missoula without any winter gear.
Yamashita’s diary entry demonstrates how Japanese immigrants during WWII were stripped of their due process rights because of xenophobia and racism. Yamashita’s unjust arrest, removal, and incarceration was partially a product of Japanese immigrants being “otherized” by American anti-Japanese and anti-immigrant sentiment for most of the 20th century. In the early to mid 20th century, Japanese immigrants faced immense anti-Japanese sentiment in California from political labor groups, individuals, and legislation: California’s Alien Land Law of 1913 restricted “aliens” from owning land; the Gentlemen’s Agreement and the 1924 Immigration Act restricted Japanese entry into the United States; and the 1940 Alien Registration Act forced all “aliens” above the age of 14 to register and be fingerprinted. All of these contributed to the “otherization” of Japanese immigrants and their children, and implied a flawed presumption that they could not truly be “real Americans” in the 20th century. The anti-Japanese and anti-immigrant rhetoric came to a peak after the attacks on Pearl Harbor spurred irrational distrust towards Japanese Americans and other immigrant groups in America.
Identification for Gihachi Yamashita for the Department of Justice Camp at Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1944. Gift of the Gihachi and Tsugio Yamashita Family (94.166.247).
Yamashita, and many other Japanese immigrants who were living in the U.S., had to face the constant barrier of anti-immigrant rhetoric and unjust legislation that deemed them to be “un-American” or unassimilable. Yamashita’s diary entry reveals his experience of being unjustly arrested in his own home, detained without cause, and imprisoned in a concentration camp due to his race. His experience exemplifies the real-life consequences of being excluded from the arbitrary definition of “an American.” Although Yamashita’s experience is unique to the context of WWII, his experience is just one example of that signifies that American immigrants have historically been susceptible to being excluded from the definition of “an American,” and as a result, have seen instances where they have been stripped of their unalienable rights.
Fordellone and Yamashita’s stories reveal common themes of vulnerability, systemic inequality, discrimination, and “otherization” that America’s immigrant populations have been subjected to throughout the country’s history. Although historic instances of “otherization” and discrimination do not solely define the American immigrant experience, it has played a significant factor in the way immigrant populations have been received and treated. The stories of Fordellone and Yamashita tell only a small story in the long history of discrimination that Japanese and Italian immigrants have faced in the United States. WWII was not the catalyst for discrimination, but rather, it acted as an immense amplifier of the discrimination. In the early 20th century, both of Japanese and Italian immigrants were already facing immense racist and xenophobic sentiment and legislation that “otherized” and targeted them. However, during WWII, war hysteria amplified preexisting racist and xenophobic sentiment which resulted in the targeting of Japanese and Italian immigrants, and the loss of their civil liberties. Although the details and extent of their incarceration experiences are different, both Fordellone and Yamashita experienced the trauma and injustices American immigrants have historically faced because of their vulnerability to systematic discrimination and anti-immigrant prejudice in America.
If you would like to learn more about Gihachi Yamashita’s story, check-out JANM’s, “Enemy Mail: An American Story of Wartime Separation,” which is dedicated to telling his and his family’s story of incarceration during WWII through artifacts in JANM’s Yamashita Collection. If you would like to learn more about Filippo Fordellone or see other objects pertaining to Fordellone you may visit the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles’s online collection webpage.
This summer, Getty Marrow undergraduate interns from JANM, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles collaborated to create a collections-based project that explored the question:
How have immigrants and subsequent generations shaped what it means to be American?
The initial goal of the project was to highlight the agency of immigrants in shaping American identity. However, the interns’ submissions suggested that the answer to this specific question would not fully encapsulate the experience of immigrants and their descendents in the United States. As a result, each intern expanded the parameters of the question to provide a different perspective and highlight an artifact that touched upon different facets of the American experience and identity. In this post, Rino Kodama and Araceli Ramos explore the ingenuity of immigrants to endure economic and social hardships in the United States by integrating aspects of their culture and values.
Rino Kodama of the Japanese American National Museum and Araceli Ramos of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes selected items that demonstrate the ingenuity and adaptability of immigrant women in the United States. Araceli’s artifact tells the story of a Mexican immigrant who created a unique American identity for herself by combining her traditional sewing skills with her new life in the United States. Rino’s submission continues the theme of ingenuity in her analysis of an indigo kasuri jacket. For Rino, the jacket, which was repurposed from a kimono to plantation clothing, symbolizes how Japanese immigrant women drew upon cultural traditions out of necessity to survive in the United States. Rino and Araceli’s posts demonstrate the notion that in the face of immense hardship, immigrant women have integrated aspects of their own culture in order to reinvent themselves and establish a unique and blended American identity.
Velvet Jacket
Contributed by: Araceli Ramos, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes
Lupe Lara, untitled, 1926, Calle Principal: Mi México en Los Ángeles Permanent Exhibit. 2011. LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes. Los Angeles, CA.
The rust colored velvet jacket on display in Calle Principal: Mi México en Los Ángeles, a permanent exhibition located inside LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, has a dynamic history filled with memories of family and tradition. This piece was donated to the museum during its first year of operation in 2011. Arlene Etheridge, a volunteer, wanted to help showcase Mexican migration stories during the 1920s. The piece dates back to 1926, when it was hand stitched by Lupe Lara, Arlene’s mother, who migrated to the United States in 1921 at the age of 9. The piece was made in the fashionable fitted style of the era using a rust colored velvet fabric. It is adorned with velvet covered buttons, and corresponding loops, along the middle closure of the main body. The fine sewing on the puffed sleeves and pointed collar add a decorative touch to the fitted silhouette.
Lupe Lara was born on May 27, 1912, in Zamora, Michoacán, México, to Luciano Lara, a Zamora courthouse judge and Dolores Covarrubia, a homemaker. In 1915, when Lupe was just three years old, the Typhus epidemic erupted in Mexico City, taking the lives of thousands of people as it spread across the nation. Tragically, Lupe’s mother and younger sister passed away in 1917 after contracting the disease. Unable to care for his daughter, Luciano moved Lupe into a nearby convent to be cared for and raised by nuns. The state of Michoacán is known throughout Mexico and the world for its regional epicenters of artisan crafts. While in the northern convent, Lupe received an elementary school education and learned the regional skill of fine hand-sewing and embroidery. She lived there for five years until 1921 when her father returned with the news that they would be moving to the United States. After joining a large caravan of horse drawn carriages, they arrived in Los Angeles a year later in 1922. In 1924, Luciano was able to purchase a small grocery store at the cross section of Kearney St. and Myers St., just north of Mission Road in Los Angeles. Lupe attended elementary school in Boyle Heights and would work at her family’s store in the evening after school.
In 1926, Lupe received a Singer sewing machine as a Christmas gift from her father. Two years later and at the age of 16, she began working as a seamstress in Downtown L.A.’s garment district. Due to her advanced knowledge of the craft, she was quickly promoted. The skills she learned during her time in the convent, and later honed while living in Los Angeles, became a source of security for herself and her family during the Great Depression. While millions were losing their jobs, Lupe was able to provide for her family by using her sewing skills to create beautiful dresses for the Hollywood elite of the era. Later in life, Lupe married and became a homemaker. She taught her children the skills she learned when she was a child. Lupe’s daughter, Arlene, inherited her mother’s affinity for craftsmanship. She became an artist incorporating her mother’s traditional sewing techniques into her art, embroidery, and jewelry designs.
Lupe’s story reveals that the “American Identity” has always been a complex combination of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Instead of succumbing to societal pressures of complete assimilation into American culture, Lupe used her traditional sewing skills to create an identity for herself that beautifully blended her heritage with her life in the United States. Her velvet jacket represents the reconciliation of two cultures into a singular “American Identity” that lives and has evolved in Los Angeles and through her descendants.
Indigo Kasuri Jacket
Contributed by: Rino Kodama, Japanese American National Museum
Tazawa Haruno, Indigo Kasuri Jacket (Hawai‘i), early 1900s, Barbara Kawakami Collection (2004.1.27), Japanese American National Museum. Los Angeles, CA.
This indigo kasuri jacket is one of many pieces in the Barbara Kawakami Collection at JANM. The jacket is a navy blue, denim color with a white dot pattern and mock collar. The fabric is worn out and many layers of stitches are made with a sewing machine in an attempt to keep the fabric together. This particular jacket was made by Haruno Tazawa.
“Kasuri” is a Japanese textile term to describe fabric that has been treated with a dye process involving a resist method, creating geometric shapes. These types of jackets were worn by Japanese women plantation laborers in Waipahu, Hawai‘i during the early 20th century. The design of the kasuri jackets drew inspiration from other immigrant working class communities. For example, the “mock” collar stems from the Mandarin collar, as many Chinese laborers wore this style of clothing and it protected their necks from the sun, as well as from dust. The cotton kasuri fabric was originally a kimono, and turned into a jacket by Haruno Tazawa, a picture bride from Fukushima, Japan.
The majority of issei women were picture brides—women who immigrated to the United States through the process of an arranged marriage. Tazawa arrived in Hawai‘i on July 27, 1917 and married Chozo Tazawa, arranged by her sister who was already living and working on a Hawaiian plantation. Mr. Tazawa was a Luna, a plantation foreman considered a high status position back then for a Japanese man. Mr. Tazawa passed away early, and life became difficult for Mrs. Tazawa as she only had 35 cents to her name. She began to sew tabi, bento bags, and jackets for plantation bachelors at night to support herself and her four children.
Men like Mr. Tazawa travelled to Hawai‘i and the continental United States seeking economic opportunity, but many ended up working in low paying jobs at sugarcane and pineapple plantations—women laborers made about 16 dollars a month.
Many picture brides like Mrs. Tazawa who immigrated to the United States utilized their skills in textiles and sewing to repurpose their prized kimonos into “plantation clothing”—apparel that can withstand the long hours in the sun working in sugar cane and pineapple fields. At first when they began working on the plantations, they wore their kimonos as they were used to wearing them. Realizing that carrying out heavy labor was not easy with long kimono sleeves, they began to alter their kimonos into clothing better suited for the plantation. The design of plantation clothing drew from Chinese, Portugese, Puerto Rican, and Hawaiian apparel. An exchange of cultural wear allowed women to create clothing that would feel comfortable and supportive for their labor. For example, the Mandarin collar and gusset sleeve came from Chinese laborers. Gathered skirts were drawn from Portugese and Puerto Rican women. Along with the kasuri jacket, women would wear a straw bonnet, using scarves to cover their face, and momohiki (pantaloons). To view more artifacts in the Barbara Kawakami Collection, click here.
This kasuri jacket, along with Haruno Tazawa’s story as a picture bride reveal that immigrants have shown resilience in an unknown land while facing economic insecurity, and adapted cultural traditions to survive in America. Using their precious kimonos and repurposing them into plantation clothing came out of necessity. Although separated by language and ethnicity, immigrant women laborers drew textile techniques from one another to create plantation clothing, crossing cultures to support one another as working class women. The United States of America is known as the “Land of Opportunity,” but the experiences of Japanese women laborers in Hawai‘i reflect that their realities were extremely difficult, working endlessly to sustain themselves and their families.
Both Lupe Lara and Haruno Tazawa faced economic uncertainty, but through their ingenuity and resolve they were able to survive and support their families. Tazawa and Lara’s experiences also demonstrate the complexity of the “American identity” and American experience. Tazawa and Lara combined their backgrounds and experiences to help themselves adapt to life in their adopted country. In the case of Tazawa, she blended her culture and skills into her new life by repurposing her kimono in order to adapt to the harsh plantation labor. For Lara, her American identity was an amalgamation of her life in Mexico and her need to support her family and herself in the United States. The design of Lara’s velvet jacket exemplifies her “American identity” as it mixed Lara’s Mexican culture and fashion with her new found life in America. After her success in the Los Angeles’s fashion district, Lara passed on her skills and craftsmanship to her own children, and subsequently also handed-down her blended Mexican-American traditions and values.
Rino and Araceli demonstrated through their highlighted artifacts that immigrant populations have often shaped the definition of what it means to be an American, by necessity. Lara and Tazawa had to adapt in order to survive the economic insecurity they faced when they immigrated to America, and consequently, their experience in their adopted country was defined by their perseverance. Together, Rino and Araceli reveal that the American experience and “American identity” are complex and are greatly influenced by the experiences of immigrant populations.
If you are interested in viewing Lupe Lara’s jacket or learning more about Los Angeles during the 1920s, you can visit La Plaza de Cultura y Artes and view one of their permanent exhibitions: Calle Principal: Mi México en Los Ángeles. If you would like to learn more about the Barbara Kawakami Collection or see other artifacts and textiles pertaining to late 19th and early 20th century Japanese immigrants, you can view JANM’s online collection.
My name is Jose Quirarte and this summer I have had the opportunity to work at the Japanese American National Museum as the Getty Marrow Collections and Curatorial Intern. I recently graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona with a bachelor’s degree in history. Throughout my undergraduate work I studied the 20th century ethnic American experience, focusing a majority of my research on the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. As a result, I wanted to create a capstone project during my internship at JANM that reflected my research interests in the Japanese American experience as well as those of other ethnic communities by exploring the complexity of American identity.
In order to fulfill this capstone project, I invited Getty Marrow Undergraduate Interns from JANM, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, the Chinese American Museum, and the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles to collaborate and create a collections-based project that focused on the ethnic American experience. Specifically, the project invited each intern to highlight items in their museum’s respective collection that reveal lesser known stories and demonstrate how the American experience has been shaped and defined by its rich ethnic history.
Interns selected an artifact or artwork that related to the broad project question:
How have immigrants and subsequent generations shaped what it means to be American?
Participants were encouraged to view and interpret this question from different perspectives and were provided a variety of sub-questions to further delve into different facets of the American experience. The initial goal of the project was to highlight the agency of immigrants in shaping American identity. However, the interns’ submissions made it clear that the answer to this specific question would not fully encompass the American experience of immigrants and their descendents. The interns, through the objects that they selected and wrote about, demonstrated the complexity of the immigrant experience in the United States. They underscored obstacles and triumphs, the ingenuity of immigrants, the unique cultural identity that formed, and the notion that “being American” has not historically conformed to one singular definition.
The following Getty Marrow Undergraduate Interns participated by shaping their own interpretations of the project question:
Japanese American National Museum: Jose Quirarte, Shelby Ottengheime, and Rino Kodama
Italian American Museum of Los Angeles: Mercedes Solaberrieta
La Plaza de Cultura y Artes: Araceli Ramos
The resulting capstone project has been crafted into a blog series titled Ethnic Effects. I have synthesized and framed the submissions into a series of posts that reveal a different facet of the American experience through an analysis of collection items.
I answered the broad project question, by selecting a drawing from JANM’s Miné Okubo Collection (2007.62). I argue that it reveals the complexity of “American identity” and the ways in which it is shaped by the cultural traditions and experiences of immigrants and their children.
Jose Quirarte, Japanese American National Museum
Miné Okubo, untitled, 1942-1945, Miné Okubo collection. 2007.62.156, Japanese American National Museum. Los Angeles, CA.
In this untitled work, artist Miné Okubo depicts herself seated at a mess hall table while she observes several individuals in the process of pounding mochi at the Topaz concentration camp in Utah during World War II. Miné Okubo was just one of the 120,000 Japanese Americans who were imprisoned in America’s concentration camps without due process because of racism and war hysteria. Executive Order 9066 laid the foundation for exclusion of Japanese Americans on the West Coast and their subsequent forced removal. Miné Okubo’s drawings depict the World War II incarceration experience— from removal on the West Coast to daily life at Topaz.
This particular drawing depicts a scene of mochitsuki, a Japanese New Year’s tradition of pounding sweet rice into mochi (rice cakes). Mochi is an important ingredient in a New Year’s soup called ozoni, which is supposed to bring luck. The three men in the background take turns pounding the sweet rice with large wooden mallets while the man kneeling in front turns the mochi and moistens it with water. To the left of Okubo, there are several mochi cakes resting on the counter.
On the surface, this drawing seems to only speak about the mochi-making process in the Topaz concentration camp. However, the drawing, in conjunction with Okubo’s other drawings, helps to reveal the dynamic nature of “American identity” by depicting Japanese Americans actively participating in Japanese traditions. From behind barbed wire fences, Japanese Americans demonstrated that American identity was not homogenous; rather, American identity had always been inherently diverse and multifaceted due to the integration of a variety of immigrant groups and their respective traditions and values. Okubo’s drawing of mochi-making signified the reality that many Japanese Americans held on to traditional Japanese institutions and values. Furthermore, her drawings indicate that Japanese Americans placed an importance on maintaining Japanese traditions, despite attempts by the War Relocation Authority to “Americanize” and “assimilate” them. From within the confines of America’s concentration camps, Japanese traditions and cultures thrived and persisted among the Japanese American community.
If the meaning of what it means to be an “American” is confined to the restrictive ideas of the “melting pot” and a European American standard, then it would allow no room for the preservation of outside cultures and traditions. Yet, Okubo and many other Japanese individuals, within the confines of concentration camps, maintained their cultural traditions and redefined the contemporary definition of American identity. Okubo’s drawings counter the restrictive narrative of the “melting pot” and highlight that Japanese immigrants and their children valued Japanese culture and were intent on keeping their traditions alive. More importantly, Okubo’s drawings reveal a bigger picture: “American identity” is inherently complex and diverse and it is shaped by the values and experiences of immigrant populations and their children.
This series, entitled: “Ethnic Effects,” will reveal commonalities and shared experiences in the American experience through material culture artifacts from JANM, La Plaza de Cultura y Artes, and the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles. The title of this series underscores the overall goal of the project: to highlight personal effects residing at cultural and ethnic museums, and use their historical significance to demonstrate the effect immigrant populations have had on shaping the American experience. Each of the posts in this series analyzes the complexity of “American identity” and demonstrates that the American experience is multifaceted. Through the Getty interns’ analysis of their respective museum items, several throughlines are apparent within the American immigrant experience. In coming to America, immigrant groups and their children have often had to adapt and reinvent themselves, face immense systemic oppression based on racial prejudice, and persevere in any way they can in order to survive. Each of the following posts reveals stories of American immigrants that exemplify the notion that the immigrant experience is not just a minor chapter in America’s history, but is instead an integral part in understanding the complex story of the American experience:
This project has been a wonderful opportunity for several of us Getty MUI interns to meet and collaborate on a project outside of our immediate internships. With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing museum personnel to work from home, a majority of the interns have only had a digital experience working with their institution. Regardless of the unfavorable transition, our supervisors have adapted and have provided the Getty interns with a valuable experience working in the museum field. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the supervisors for their support of this project and their ingenuity in adapting their Getty programs to accommodate work from home.
Thank you to Kristen Hayashi, Clement Hanami, and Akira Boch of JANM; Marianna Gatto of the Italian American Museum of Los Angeles; Gina Alicia Lopez Ramos, Erika Garcia, and Liz Gama of La Plaza de Cultura y Artes; Rachelle Shumard and Ashley Lee of the Chinese American Museum.
Without your support, this project would have not been possible.
JANM’s 2017 summer interns spending time in Little Tokyo. L to R: Mia Kato, Karina Kawana, Leighton Okada, and Ridge Hirano.
Mia Kato interned this past summer with JANM’s facility maintenance and rentals department. She offers the following account of her experience.
When I first started interning at the Japanese American National Museum, I thought I would be doing such typical intern tasks as getting coffee, making photocopies, and stapling documents together. Little did I know that my summer was going to be filled with different tasks every day—from designing a website to tasting sushi at a hotel.
I was pretty nervous in the beginning. Learning where everything was and how to use it was very overwhelming at first. Not to mention, remembering everyone’s names was a challenge—thank goodness for name cards! When I was presented with a desk in the facilities office and a building access badge, I felt official. Having sat in classrooms all of my life, the work setting felt a lot different to me. I felt like a real grownup for once and it was great.
Over the last couple of months at JANM I learned a lot. I initially came here because I needed to complete a 400-hour course credit requirement for school. As I put in these hours however, I was exposed to many different aspects of museum operations, including visitor services, public programs, and facility maintenance and rentals. These different departments taught me a lot of things and I am so thankful for the people who took me under their wing.
In visitor services, I experienced what it was like to be the first person to represent the museum. To be able to answer the numerous questions that always came in, I had to expand my knowledge about the museum, Japanese American history, and Little Tokyo. Being in the front of the museum also brought me closer to the visitors that came in, because I got to learn their stories and their personal connections to Japanese American history.
When I worked in public programs, I was amazed to learn how many little details go into each event. I learned to think outside of the box and to look at not only the bigger picture but the smaller details. This department helped me understand a lot more about my hospitality administration major and everything that it takes to organize an event.
Facility maintenance and rentals was the primary department that I was assigned to. At first, I was a little wary about being in this department because I did not know what kind of work it would entail. To my surprise, this was not your average 9-5 job; every day was a different adventure. My supervisors were amazing and always included me in the various activities that went on throughout the day. I was able to go on walkthroughs, join food vendor tastings, and even climbed to the roof of the building at one point.
Together, our department worked on marketing and advertising facility rentals for the museum. We worked on a new website, a brochure, and a rentals packet. They taught me the process of organizing event rentals, which requires a lot of paperwork and attention to detail. I also got to work on my correspondence and communication skills.
Overall, I had a wonderful experience at JANM. I came in very hesitant and nervous, but I am leaving with new skills and experiences that I never in my life thought would happen. Each department taught me something a little different that I will be able to apply to my studies at school and in the future, at work. I appreciate everything that I got to do this summer through JANM and I hope that the next group of interns will have as much fun as I did.
Mia Kato is studying hospitality administration at Boston University.
Applications for the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Summer Internships at the Japanese American National Museum are due on April 27! If you are considering applying, read on for one former intern’s story of how the experience changed her life.
A communications major, an art major, and an English major walk into a bar…
2011 Getty interns Yuiko Sugino, Alexa Kim, and Alyctra Matsushita, in front of a wall drawing by Stan Sakai.
What sounds like the beginning of a bad joke was my college reality. Living in a house of Humanities and Social Science majors, my roommates and I spent four years worrying not just about term papers and printer cards, but also about student loans and postgraduate careers. As optimistic freshmen, we joked that upon graduation we would all live in cardboard box mansions, as that would be all we could afford. But as graduation loomed nearer, we said it more frequently through gritted teeth.
Then, in my junior year I learned about the Getty Multicultural Undergraduate Internship, available at the Japanese American National Museum as well as numerous other museums throughout Southern California. It sounded promising on all counts. I was attending UC Santa Barbara, and returning to Los Angeles for a cool internship sounded much better than the alternative of slopping meals at my student job in the campus dining commons. I also liked the idea of putting “Getty Intern” in big, bold letters on a résumé that boasted little more than my previously mentioned cafeteria duties. And perhaps most important of all, it was PAID!
After eagerly filling out the application, getting my letters of recommendation, and sacrificing a lamb or two, I learned that I was chosen to be JANM’s 2011 Media Arts Intern. Although excited, I was also a little wary and hoped I wouldn’t be a glorified coffee runner, coming home with fingers bloodied by paper cuts and blackened from fixing toner cartridge jams. But I figured at the very least, I’d have ten weeks in Little Tokyo surrounded by all the mochi ice cream I could get my hands on.
I can still remember my first day, five years ago. I was immediately introduced to the two other Getty interns, who were assigned to the curatorial and production departments. We all squished together on a pale leather sofa in a bright room called the Takei Lounge, nervously awaiting further instructions and making awkward small talk. Then, after a quick orientation, we dove into our jobs as museum interns.
Alyctra Matsushita, right, with Discover Nikkei interns Maya Kochiyama and Krista Chavez. Photo courtesy of discovernikkei.org.
As cliché as it sounds, the ten weeks in Media Arts flew by as I learned many new skills. I spent Saturdays filming public programs, meeting speakers that included baseball players and sports executives, hearing poetry readings, and learning the history of kamaboko (fish cake)—with samples! I got a VIP invitation to the Japanese Consul General’s home. I was suddenly able to grab a camera, shoot some videotape, and use Final Cut Pro to edit my own film. I learned basic Photoshop, and could create a real DVD with all the bells and whistles. Yet, as résumé-ready as these skills were, it was the experience and the interactions with people at the museum that were most life-changing.
I met staff and volunteers who had passion for the same things that I had passion for—brilliant people who cared about Japanese American history and culture, who understood the beauty of books and the knowledge they held. I met academics whose texts I had studied. I met people who could (and had) designed exhibitions from the ground up. One of my fellow Getty interns learned about the mysteries that could be unearthed in a pile of artifacts with a pair of white gloves, while the other experimented with wall vinyls and paints, learning how to make research come to life.
During a summer 2011 public program, Frank Kawana demonstrates how to make kamaboko (Japanese fish cake) by hand.
In those ten quick weeks, I gained a new skill set, a few extra pounds from all the mochi ice cream and snacks, and most importantly, the knowledge that there is a brick-and-mortar set of walls that houses (and pays!) people who care about the same things I care about. When I left, I still didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with my postgraduate life, but I had a much stronger idea of where I might like to be.
In 2014, when I got a call from my amazing Media Arts supervisor about a temporary position in the museum store, I jumped at the opportunity to get my foot back in the door. Since then, I’ve managed to turn that temp gig into a full-time job, taking on a combination of Development, JANM Store, and Visitor Services duties. I’ve connected and reconnected with dozens of wonderful people, met the great George Takei (friend of the museum and the namesake of the lounge where I met my fellow interns back on that first day), and found a real home in this little JANM family.
For details on the available internships and how to apply, visit our Jobs page.
Sean with his JABA/JANM supervisors at the NCI Opening Luncheon
This summer we were lucky enough to host Sean Hamamoto, our second Nikkei Community Intern in collaboration with the Japanese American Bar Association (JABA)! We had a great time getting to know Sean, a rising sophomore Politics major at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Nikkei Community Internship is an eight-week program that places college students at various Japanese American organizations across California. Interns get a taste of working life at their placements for four days of the week, then spend the remaining day on leadership development and community training. For the internship, JANM shared an intern with JABA to work on joint Discover Nikkei projects.
As our Discover Nikkei intern, Sean contributed to every section of the site by adding albums, events, and articles. He even contributed a fantastic article to our (ongoing!) Nikkei+ competition (deadline for submissions: September 30, 2013). In “4-Sei What? That’s Mixed Up,” Sean talked about why he considers himself a Yonsei with an Issei mother and Sansei father. (If you really liked his entry, don’t forget to make a Discover Nikkei account and vote for it!)
With JABA, Sean worked on the Legacy Project: Legal Legends in the Nikkei Community, which seeks to record profiles of Japanese American legal leaders. He interviewed Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender Janice Fukai and attorney/civil rights activist Rose Ochi about their life and work. In addition to these profiles, Sean got to put his Japanese skills to good use at JABA’s free legal clinic, where he registered clients.
You can read Sean’s reflection of his eight weeks with JANM and JABA here. Sean’s passions for law and Japanese culture were huge assets to both his work at JANM and JABA. We hope he’ll remain a frequent visitor to JANM!
Growing up in Southern California as a person of Japanese descent, JANM has played a large role in helping me discover my cultural identity. Each exhibit that I have immersed myself in has, in one way or another, done an excellent job of captivating me while still teaching me about my Japanese American heritage. Out of all the exhibits that I have seen, the museum’s newest installment Visible & Invisible: A Hapa Japanese American History has been one of the most personally intriguing because it delves into the deep history of mixed-race and hapa individuals within the United States. Being half Japanese and half Caucasian myself, I found Visible & Invisible to be very relatable to my life.
As I walked through the exhibit, a few pieces that really piqued my interest, including an anti-Japanese campaign poster for California Senator James D. Phelan that revealed the prejudice and discrimination Japanese Americans faced more than two decades before World War II. Another intriguing part of the exhibit was an article from Ebony magazine that highlighted the troubles endured by children of American soldiers and Japanese women. Although I can’t entirely relate to those children due to the fact that being hapa hasn’t been detrimental to me at all, I realize now that life for some mixed race children, both in Japan and in the United States following World War II, was not easy.
Basketball has played a huge role in my life. Up until this past year I had been spending the majority of my weekends either at practices or games for my team, the Venice Lakers. Seeing the different Venice jerseys and pictures of multiple teams, a few of which I recognized, brought back many fond memories of my time playing Japanese American basketball. It was easily my favorite part of the exhibit. JA basketball helps expose children to not only the sport of basketball, but to different aspects of Japanese culture. If you ask a child of Japanese descent if he plays basketball, there’s a high likelihood that he or she will say yes, or will know somebody who does.
Another facet of the exhibit that interested me was Virgil Westdale, a half Japanese, half Caucasian soldier forced to switch his name from Nishimura to Westdale so he could join the armed forces. After the United States Army Air Corps found out about Westdale’s background they demoted him to private, stripped him of his pilot’s license, and sent him to Camp Shelby in Mississippi to join the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The accompanying video helped me delve deeper into Westdale’s personal account of what life was like for him as a mixed-race member of the 442nd and as an American of Japanese heritage during World War II.
Lastly, this exhibit wouldn’t feel like a JANM exhibit without a compelling interactive component. I very much enjoyed the interactive aspects of last year’s XLAB 2012, however, the black journal experiment in Visible & Invisible has become my favorite, mainly because of the personal touch each participant can add. It’s absolutely amazing to see the artistic skills and personal messages from people as far north as Eugene, Oregon, to people who have lived in Boyle Heights since 1944.
Ultimately I would have to say that the main reason that Visible & Invisible initially appealed to me was because I am mixed-race. However, walking through the exhibit I realized that the exhibit wasn’t so much about being hapa as it was about the Japanese American experience. Visible & Invisible runs the gamut in terms of Japanese and mixed race culture within the United States by giving an informative, yet enthralling, look at nearly 300 years of history. I highly recommend coming to the JANM to check this exhibit out before it ends on August 25th.
Writer Jeremy Parks is a 17 year old high school senior who attends Campbell Hall High School in Studio City. He is an editor on his school’s newspaper. He is volunteering this summer with the museum’s Watase Media Arts Center.
As I near the end of the 10 weeks here at the Museum, I revisited the job description out of curiosity – how accurately did the description match what actually transpired?
Media Arts/Public Programs Intern
Example of the assignment include:
1) Videography and editing of public programs that feature world-renowned scholars, artists, musicians and community activists.
Public Programs by Dr. Cherstin M. Lyon and Dr. Diane C. Fujino? Scholars.Check.
Interviews with Ako Castuera, Sean Chao, and Rob Sato? Artists. Check.
Public Program by Anabel Stenzel and Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and combing through Gidra footage with Mike Murase and Evelyn Yoshimura for Discover Nikkei? Community Activists.Check.
2) Research, production assistance and transcription of life history interviews with notable Japanese Americans.
3) Design and implementation of motion graphic elements for short video productions that will be broadcast on local television and featured on the Museum’s websites.
4) In addition to receiving training for the specific duties and responsibilities of the internship, the Museum’s volunteer docents will introduce the intern to the history and work culture of the National Museum as well as the history of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
Japanese American History Classes, tour of Common Ground, and Little Tokyo Walking Tour? Check.
The only thing not listed above: Time Traveling.
Professor Lloyd Inui
One of my greatest joys of being here at the Museum has been sitting in on the Life History Interviews. This past week, John Esaki, Akira Boch, and Chris Aihara and I had the opportunity to interview Professor Lloyd Inui [Professor Emeritus at CSULB in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and a senior adviser at the Japanese American National Museum]. In a way, each of the Life History Interviews is but a single time capsule that saves and preserves one’s individual experiences up until that moment in video form.
Over the course of about 3 hours, we traveled from before 1930 to the present day as Lloyd told stories of his childhood, incarceration, post-war employment, time in the military service and the beginnings of Asian and Asian American Studies at CSULB. Not only was it was amazing to hear eyewitness experiences of the effects of war and living through the incarceration camps, it was impoartant to realize how the major that will be written on my diploma next year was formed – through struggle, perseverance and a desire for remembrance, a passion for critical thinking, as well as progression forward.
Lloyd’s vivid recollections of warfare, the meetings of some of the first Asian American Studies classes, and perspective into his journey to the present day were truly insightful, stark and honest – treasures that I hope future generations will learn from and appreciate. Each person has a story to tell. Lloyd’s unique experiences, the seemingly insignificant details, every friendship he formed over the years, added to the person he is today and the ideas that he calls his own. It’s striking to realize that someday, maybe in the far future, the next generation will be asking us to tell our life story.
What histories are being written right now? What is your story only you can tell?
Lloyd Inui, Chris Aihara and Akira Boch
Jenni Nakamura is one of three Getty Multicultural Intern working within the Watase Media Arts Center, a senior studying Asian American Studies at UCLA with an interest in culturally relevant social services and the social networks of Asian American churches, and a passion to explore the use of visual arts to preserve and give light to hidden personal histories and community issues.
Sometimes, when I visit museums, the exhibits tend to lack substance and are most of the time, very similar. After walking through and reflecting on the material, I don’t feel like I’ve gained anything. It feels as if something is lacking. Xploration Lab 2012 (XLAB) fulfills every need and want in an exhibit and more. XLAB is an innovative museum experience where participants are fully immersed in each aspect of the display, and through their participation, aid in the creation of future engaging exhibitions for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM).
XLAB’s main focus is to educate visitors on the importance of culture and identity, and how sometimes, those two concepts are one in the same. In modern America, the teenage demographic, while seemingly hard to understand, is actually not so much of an enigma as many people are led to believe. They are on the precipice of adulthood and are beginning to stray away from their normal routine to engage in new experiences. XLAB is the perfect exhibit for any teenager because the subject matter is broad enough to entice them, yet specific enough to be relatable. In addition, teenagers are trying to figure out who they are and that is essentially what XLAB is all about. The interactive aspect of this exhibit adds a whole new dimension to the clichéd museum experience and makes it more effective in delivering its message.
As I walked into XLAB, I instantly realized that this exhibit would be unlike any other museum experience I had previously encountered. Since I’m a half Caucasian and half Japanese teenager, the first section that really caught my eye was What Are You? Each person who participated in Kip Fulbeck’s project had words to say that I could relate to as a teenager and as a person of multiple cultural backgrounds. Although the rest of the first room was wonderful and educational, the placement of My Voice is a Microphone made the activity somewhat easy to miss for people who weren’t paying attention to the layout.
The next room contained a lot more interaction and each section had content that would attract teenagers. One of XLAB’s more popular portions is Ways to Tell if You’re Japanese American. Even though the list was written from a Southern California Sansei and Yonsei perspective, almost every local Japanese American teenager can relate to at least a few numbers on the list. A common high school student would certainly enjoy two of the last activities: Pidgin and Express Yourself. Pidgin is a dialect that is the unofficial language of Hawaii. XLAB has taken this idea and added modern internet slang such as LOL, FTW, and ROFL, which has made it much more relatable for teenagers, while still infusing the cultural Hawaiian roots into the activity.
Express Yourself is another ingenious portion that focuses on how expression through what people wear is becoming more and more prominent. The section is composed of a large whiteboard where visitors could design their own shirts using dry erase markers, and magnets. Surrounding the white board are completed t-shirts that aid in the expression of ones culture and identity. The interaction involved in this activity helped make it one the most popular activities that XLAB had to offer.
Each and every activity had a successful way of delivering the overall message of culture and identity. People of all ages would enjoy this exhibit because of everything it has to offer. The interaction of each activity sets XLAB apart from the plethora of boring and formulaic exhibits that most teenagers are accustomed to. In essence, this exhibit is not one to miss, and everyone should take some time out of his or her day to experience what XLAB has to offer, before it closes on August 26th.
Writer Jeremy Parks, a summer intern at JANM, will be in 11th grade this coming fall at Campbell Hall High School located in Studio City. He will be a news editor on his school paper and is an offensive lineman on the football team.
