News Release

The Library will open a new exhibition on Jan. 13 that highlights the stories of 15 local Japanese Americans whose lives were impacted by the internment of Japanese American citizens in camps during World War II. The exhibition will be on display through March 18 in the Skylight Gallery at the Main Library. An opening program featuring those profiled in the exhibition will also be held at 2 p.m. on Jan. 20 in the Main Library’s Koret Auditorium.

In 1942, following President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066, some 120,000 Japanese Americans from the West Coast were moved into internment camps for the duration of the war. They were allowed to take only the possessions they could carry and were forced to abandon their businesses and personal property. The legacy of that experience is explored in If They Came For Me Today: The Japanese American Internment Project, a powerful living history exhibition documenting the experiences of Japanese American internees. This multimedia exhibition, organized by Community Works with students at George Washington, Balboa and Horace Mann schools in San Francisco, honors those who were interned or impacted by the internment. Drawing on the oral histories of Japanese Americans who were themselves interned or whose parents were internees, the students worked to create a unique exhibition that simultaneously chronicles the experiences of one generation and the reactions of another. The organizers hope to bring the exhibition to thousands of Bay Area students, inspiring further dialogue about the internment and its impact on all of our lives today.

The message of If They Came For Me Today is powerful: Civil injustice resonates for generations. After hearing the stories of the 15 men and women affected by the internment, the students produced written, visual and video art relating interviewees’ stories to their own personal experiences and to contemporary instances of civil injustice. Their work is featured in the exhibition, along with suitcases full of artifacts from detainees, photographs and biographies of the honorees.

The exhibition’s opening program on Jan. 20 will honor 13 of the individuals profiled and include presentations by students from George Washington, Balboa and Horace Mann schools, as well as commentary by Jeff Adachi, public defender for the City and County of San Francisco, who will discuss the impact of his parents’ internment on his life; playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, who will read an excerpt from his latest production After the War, which looks at the aftermath of the end of the internment on the lives of those who returned home; and poet Janice Mirikatani, who was born in an internment camp.

This exhibition and program are free and open to the public. For more information, please call (415) 557-4277.

Note: Photographs and interviews with internees are available.