From Barbed Wire to Battlefields Programming

Please join us at the Museum for some of the events accompanying our latest special exhibit, From Barbed Wire to Battlefields: Japanese American Experiences in WWII, on view March 15-October 12, 2014 in the Joe W. and D. D. Brown Foundation Special Exhibit Gallery.

Exhibit Opening and Meet the Author Event
In Good Conscience: Supporting Japanese
Americans During the Internment by Shizue Seigel
Thursday, March 20, 2014
5:00 pm Exhibit Viewing and Opening Reception | 6:00 pm Meet the Author Presentation
6:30 pm Book Signing and Additional Exhibit Viewing

Exhibit Opening
Joe W. and D. D. Brown Foundation Special Exhibit Gallery

Would you dare to defend your nation while others like you, possibly even your own family, are confined behind barbed wire within that same nation for reasons of ancestry alone? More than 33,000 Japanese Americans did just that. A new special exhibit at The National WWII Museum will showcase some of their stories.

From Barbed Wire to Battlefields: Japanese American Experiences in WWII includes artifacts, oral histories and stark images depicting the hardships faced by those Americans of Japanese ancestry suspected of sympathizing with the enemy and discriminated against because of their heritage. The exhibit will also honor the heroics of those Japanese Americans who overcame adversity and helped to secure American victory on the battlefields.

Meet the Author
Solomon Victory Theater

After Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States was gripped by fear, anger and racial prejudice. In the name of national security, 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned. Not a single one was ever found guilty of espionage or sabotage. In Good Conscience explores the relatively few Americans who recognized at the time that the United States government was committing a great wrong. Author Shizue Seigel sketches vivid portraits of two dozen teachers, ministers and just plain folks who advocated for the Japanese Americans in the media, worked in the internment camps, safeguarded their property or helped them start new lives after leaving the camps. In Good Conscience brings new insight into what transforms ordinary people into extraordinary advocates for justice and compassion. Co-sponsored by the Japan Society of New Orleans. A light reception will precede the event. For more information call 504-528-1944 x 333.

RSVPs are appreciated for this event.
RSVP now.

Book Discussion
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
6:00 pm
Stage Door Canteen

Discuss with fellow readers the story the Los Angeles Times called “Haunting…. A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper.” In 1954, a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. See how the echoes of the past cloud the present and affect the future. Come prepared to ask questions and discuss the novel with participants and Museum staff.

This event is free and open to the public.
RSVP now.

Meet the Author and Book Signing Event
Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II edited by Eric L. Muller
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
6:00 pm
Stage Door Canteen

In 1942, Bill Manbo (1908–1992) and his family were forced from their Hollywood home into the War Relocation Center at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. While there, Manbo documented both the bleakness and beauty of his surroundings, using Kodachrome film, a technology then just seven years old, to capture community celebrations and to record his family’s struggle to maintain a normal life under the harsh conditions of racial imprisonment. Colors of Confinement showcases 65 stunning images from this extremely rare collection of color photographs, presented along with three interpretive essays by leading scholars and a reflective, personal essay by a former Heart Mountain internee. Eric Muller presents.
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Film Screening
30th Anniversary Screening of The Karate Kid
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
6:00 pm
US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center

The Karate Kid is a 1984 film directed by John G. Avildsen and written by Robert Mark Kamen, starring Ralph Macchio, Noriyuki “Pat” Morita and Elisabeth Shue. It was a commercial success upon release, and garnered favorable critical acclaim, earning Morita an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Morita, who was, himself, a child internee at Gila River Relocation Center, plays Mr. Miyagi, veteran of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team who befriends Macchio’s Daniel LaRusso and teaches him karate.
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Meet the Author and Book Signing Event
Tom Graves presents Twice Heroes: America’s Nisei Veterans of WWII and Korea
Thursday, August 7, 2014
5:00 pm
Stage Door Canteen

In their own words, Nisei veterans recount their battles against wartime suspicion and racism, and of overcoming them with courage and patriotism. Writer and photographer Tom Graves spent a decade with the Nisei (Japanese American) soldiers of World War II and the Korean War, determined to share their unlikely story. At first denigrated and mistrusted, Nisei veterans — now in their 80s and 90s — earned the praise of a nation, and ultimately, a Congressional Gold Medal. The most decorated US military unit in history, they fought while their families were interned in bleak American prison camps during World War II. Twice Heroes earned the prestigious 2014 Benjamin Franklin Award in History. 
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Special Presentation
“Challenging Internment”
Thursday, September 4, 2014
6:00 pm
Stage Door Canteen

Hiroko Kusuda, Associate Clinic Professor at Loyola New Orleans College of Law will present on one of her first client experiences, a legal case involving Japanese American incarceration and redress.
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Meet the Author
The Art of Gaman by Delphine Hirasuna
Thursday, September 25, 2014
6:00 pm
Stage Door Canteen

During World War II, the 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast were ordered into barbed-wire enclosed internment camps, allowed to bring only what they could carry. The Art of Gaman relates how the internees practiced the discipline of gaman enduring the seemingly impossible with patience and dignity by creating objects of beauty and utility out of scrap and found materials. The objects stand as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Author Delphine Hirasuna presents.
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Documentary Screening
Good Luck Soup
Thursday, October 9, 2014
6:00 pm
Solomon Victory Theater

The Midwestern city of Cleveland, Ohio, is the setting for this contemporary Japanese American story. Told from the perspective of 29-year-old filmmaker Matthew Hashiguchi, Good Luck Soup is a personal documentary that reveals the post-internment camp lives of Japanese Americans in the American Midwest through the dynamic relationship of Matthew and his grandmother, Eva Hashiguchi, a victim of the World War II Japanese American Internment Camps.
RSVP now.