The Modern Art Notes Podcast will start its fall season with a program that spotlights the leading museum-sector institutional response to encroaching fascism and our perilous national condition. You will not want to miss it. Tell a friend, subscribe now. (It's free!) manpodcast.com/subscribe/

Nancy Ukai dug into the stories behind the wood carvings & nameplates that are now a part of the Allen Hendershott Eaton Collection & featured in @jamuseum.bsky.social’s traveling exhibition, "Contested Histories: Preserving and Sharing a Community Collection."

When governments police museums, they are not simply policing exhibitions. They are policing imagination itself. Censorship has taken hold at the Smithsonian. I refused to play along.” —Amy Sherald

“The Snow Country Prison Memorial is our story as well as the Native American story.” The monument recognizes the common experience shared by Japanese Americans and Indigenous communities who faced forced removal and oppression by the United States. northdakotamonitor.com/2025/08/27/n...

These latest attempts to sanitize and reshape history to fit a narrow ideological narrative amount to nothing less than the erasure of history. We cannot reverse America’s journey toward a more just and equitable future. www.latimes.com/entertainmen...

If you are in the LA area, be sure to check out Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community, a free exhibit from @jamuseum.bsky.social (off-site in Pasadena). And engage w/ the docents! Their stories and insights really enhanced my cultural awareness. #diversity #asianamerican

Congratulations to the Terminal Islanders Association and Los Angeles Conservancy on the Historic-Cultural Monument designation of Terminal Island’s Furusato Tuna Street Buildings by the LA City Council! www.laconservancy.org/learn/histor...

Join us for a Day of Action to defend the truth of WWIl Japanese American incarceration history. Hear from incarceration survivors, community activists, and allies to honor our history and demand that this injustice never happens again. #ProtectEveryPark Saturday, August 23, 10am @ JANM Plaza

The use of national security rhetoric to justify mass incarceration today echoes the same logic that led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans. It is inconceivable that the US is once again building concentration camps, denying the lessons learned 80 years ago. www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-a...

Museums must be places of truth, not propaganda—spaces where the next generation can confront the complexity of our nation’s injustices, mistakes, and darkest chapters; where empathy, social responsibility, and the courage to defend democracy are nurtured. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/a...

“We are outraged and deeply distressed that armed federal agents came onto our campus — making arrests on the very ground where, in 1942, Japanese American families were forced to board buses bound for concentration camps.” — Ann Burroughs, CEO of the Japanese American National Museum

Earlier today, U.S. Border Patrol agents conducted a raid in Little Tokyo near a press event held by @cagovernornewsom.bsky.social. Reporting by @shoton35mm.bsky.social @eltragon.bsky.social @marinamasako.bsky.social

We are outraged and deeply distressed that armed federal agents came onto our campus—making arrests on the very ground where, in 1942, Japanese American families were forced to board buses bound for concentration camps. It was a deliberate act of provocation and intimidation.

I saw two versions of America in LA’s Little Tokyo yesterday. In the Democracy Center at the Japanese Am. Nat’l Museum, I watched CA leaders announce plans to fight authoritarianism. Outside were heavily armed ICE agents—a Trump regime stunt designed to terrorize immigrant Angelenos & stifle dissent

On August 6, 1945 at 8:15 a.m., the US dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of #Hiroshima, the first time in human history that any country used the unparalleled power and devastation of atomic bombs. The US remains the only country to use nuclear weapons during a time of war.

What I learned patrolling for ICE in Terminal Island. The same federal facility that detained Japanese Americans in 1942 is now the staging ground for immigration raids across LA. One San Pedro resident documents what he’s seen and why history feels like it’s repeating itself.

Our newest exhibition uses cars and trucks to tell the story of Japanese Americans in Southern California #CruisingJTown www.latimes.com/00000198-5cf...

NOW ON VIEW! 🏁 "Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community" tells the stories of influential figures and everyday car lovers alike who have played vital roles in countless car scenes—from hot rods and lowriders to the import craze and drift racing. www.janm.org/exhibits/cru...

"Right now it feels like that lesson that was learned has been entirely forgotten," says JANM curator Emily Anderson www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/v...

Oliver Wang has a great new book and exhibition about Japanese American car culture, that includes the story of the fabulous Atomettes, a women's social club that organized roadtrips barely a decade after WWII Japanese incarceration. I write about it for @kcrw.com: email.kcrw.com/cruising-j-t...

Opening July 31! 🏎️🏁 "Cruising J-Town: Behind the Wheel of the Nikkei Community" tells the stories of influential figures and everyday car lovers alike who have played vital roles in countless car scenes—from hot rods and lowriders to the import craze and drift racing. www.janm.org/exhibits/cru...

Long Lead's newest feature THE AGE OF INCARCERATION puts a human face on one of the darkest stains of U.S. history — the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. It's a testimony of a time when the U.S. locked up its own people simply because of where their families had come from.

JANM stands in solidarity with the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (NMPRAC) and denounces this show of intimidation and force by ICE. www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/07/17/u...

Reports of ICE presence on Terminal Island is an act that chillingly echoes the shameful forced removal of Japanese Americans from that very place eighty-three years ago. This dangerous pattern signals a willful failure to heed the lessons of wartime incarceration. lataco.com/ice-is-stagi...

Brian Niiya spoke to our @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute on the topic of redress (formerly interned Japanese Americans received a presidential apology and $20K each in 1988). Brian also runs Densho.org, which provides excellent resources for teaching Japanese Internment.

A special moment: Richard Murakami shared carvings his father made in internment camps in CA & AR. One act of kindness: Richard told us that a Long Beach neighbor carefully stored all of his father's farming equipment for the years of internment to return when they came home. @jamuseum.bsky.social

Incredibly fortunate to hear from four Japanese Americans who lived in internment camps as children. Two went on to serve in the US military. Thank you, Ms. Berk and Mr. Iwashashi, Mr. Yamashita, & Mr. Murakami for telling your story to our @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute.

Our @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute group had a very meaningful visit to Manzanar today. In the blazing sun, it was hard to imagine that many families spent years interned here, simply because they were of Japanese ancestry.

Our @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute kicked things off with very interesting walking tours of Little Tokyo and Boyle Heights, both historic centers of the Japanese American community in LA. One of our tour guides was born in Manzanar in 1944.

Our @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute learned about the US Army's 442nd regiment, comprised entirely of Japanese American soldiers who lived by their "Go For Broke" slogan and fought valiantly in the European theater of WWII- all while their families were interned in camps. Heroes!

They banned George Takei's "They Called Us Enemy" for telling the truth about our history. @georgetakei.bsky.social pen.org/magic-tree-h...

Kick off day for the @jamuseum.bsky.social teacher institute on Japanese American history in Little Tokyo, LA. My teacher roommate and I are staying at the Miyako Hotel, which has an Ohtani mural on the side and served LA Dodger helmet shaped buns in its coffee shop.

We know too well the devastating consequences of such action—families torn apart, livelihoods destroyed, and multigenerational trauma inflicted on a community for decades. #AlligatorAlcatraz #NeverAgainIsNow

The use of national security rhetoric to justify mass incarceration echoes the same logic that led to the forced removal and incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese Americans—our parents, grandparents and extended families—under Executive Order 9066. #AlligatorAlcatraz #NeverAgainIsNow

If you see one of these signs at a national historic park, we encourage you to go to the link provided and tell the Department of the Interior to STOP REWRITING HISTORY. #ScrubNothing

History does not yield to censorship or political ideologies. It demands honest, transparent conversations and a commitment to having an evolving understanding of how the past shapes the present and the future. www.sfgate.com/california-p...

We and 60+ orgs are joining @asianlawcaucus.org , @AAAJ_AAJC, and the Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality in filing an amicus brief urging the court to fulfill their role in preserving the right to due process and ensuring judicial review of executive orders.

Widespread dismantling of federal agencies that support our work and the attempts at the wholesale erasure of history will not help us achieve a more just America. www.museumsassociation.org/museums-jour...

Discriminatory laws like these are dangerous to democracy and echo past injustices, including the Chinese Exclusion Act, Alien Land Laws, and World War II incarceration policies. fortune.com/2025/05/09/t...

On Friday, the Texas House of Reps voted to advance legislation that would bar Chinese citizens from owning property. Discriminatory laws like these are dangerous to democracy and echo the racism, xenophobia, and authoritarianism that led to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

Terminal Island’s Japanese American residents rally to save its last standing buildings. After bulldozing an entire Japanese American village during WWII, San Pedro is about to destroy the only two buildings that survived – unless preservationists can stop the clock.

. @marinamasako.bsky.social visits Little Tokyo’s Japanese American National Museum to speak with them after they lost funding for standing for DEI. Here’s what they had to say. @jamuseum.bsky.social

Now, more so than ever, there’s a need for ethnic, cultural, religious, all communities, to join together to fight this madness. We need to stand together. We need to be holding hands. At JANM, we’re going to fight for all communities. lasentinel.net/national-jap...

We’re not going to change our history. #ScrubNothing news.artnet.com/art-world/mu...

In the wake of this significant ruling, JANM reiterates our call for the repeal of the Alien Enemies Act. The Act as written is discriminatory on its face. Its invocation during peacetime violates the Act itself. www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/p...

The people whose families were sent to US concentration camps in WWII understand what's going on today.

“We stand up for our values, and we aren't prepared to sacrifice those values for federal funding." laist.com/news/arts-an...

In Mahmoud Khalil's letter from ICE detention in Louisiana, he cites Japanese American incarceration and Mitsuye Endo, who was incarcerated in the Tule Lake concentration camp, and whose case before the Supreme Court led to the closing of the camps. Read his letter here: t.ly/A04cc

The Manzanar Committee is grateful for the steadfast leadership of the @jamuseum.bsky.social The Japanese American National Museum made headlines after the institution’s board chairman Bill Fujioka told the Los Angeles Times that JANM would continue to embrace DEI hyperallergic.com/1002373/japa...

We will #ScrubNothing