A Caveat: 

This will be a multi-media presentation during the on-site session at the annual meeting. Consequently this paper is only a portion of what will be presented for this subject and the presentation format will differ somewhat from what is noted here. 

While the making of history can be done by anyone and everyone, the study, the analysis and preservation of history is usually the domain of the learned expert - amateur or professional. Dedicated scholars spend a lifetime diligently pouring through faded documents and dusty volumes seeking the most detailed information which they can categorize, analyze and argue over in long, painstakingly crafted, carefully annotated, footnoted and bibliographed papers, journal articles and books. Subtle but significant moments in complex sections of historical events are thoughtfully and thoroughly presented and explained to their colleagues and students of history. 

This is, I assume, the case with the work presented at this annual meeting and certainly in this session "Struggle on Many Fronts: Interpretations and Reinterpretations of Japanese Americans in the Pacific War." 

Culture and History Museums also deal with history but how they present their works face somewhat different challenges. Steve Haller of the National Park Service has invited me to participate in this session to discuss with you how history can be exhibited or, more precisely, how the Japanese American National Museum has exhibited the history of Japanese Americans who fought in World War II. 

There are many different types of visitors to museums but broadly speaking, they can be categorized into three general types - streakers, strollers and scholars. Streakers race through exhibits, mainly reading the titles of each exhibit panel, glancing at some of the artifacts and pausing occasionally when a particular item or area captures their interest before moving on. Strollers take exhibits at a more leisurely pace, usually reading the first few lines of text and stopping more often to look at photographs and artifacts. Scholars have a deep interest in the subject matter at hand, read everything that is available in the exhibit down to the last label and carefully look at everything on exhibit. Exhibits need to take these three basic viewing styles into consideration and add information in layers in order to engage as wide an audience as possible. Consequently, what I will be doing in the course of this presentation is layer in information from the streaker level to the scholar on how museums interpret history in exhibits. 

Exhibiting History - the Challenges for a Culture and History Museum 

Life would be much easier for museum curators if history exhibits were simply textbooks nailed to the wall. That, obviously, is not the case. The challenge for museums is to take complex ideas, events, sweeps of history and using static items such as photographs, documents and material objects, turn them into living history that is educational, accurate, authentic and engaging. 

Museums are educational institutions but they are also seen as a social event - someplace to go, something to do with one's friends or family. Museum education is voluntary, non-classroom education. Museums can't force anyone to come, to stop and learn, to remember - there are no tests, no report cards as an incentive to learn. 

Watch people as they walk through exhibits. In this MTV generation, few will stop long enough to read long, complex explanations - most will only read the first few lines unless the text is extremely engaging to the viewer. Consequently, even though exhibits may deal with complex issues, the explanations need to get their points across easily and quickly. 

Exhibiting Japanese American History - the Challenges for the Japanese American National Museum 

The Japanese American National Museum is a young Museum, opening its doors to the public in 1992. But it had its beginnings more than ten years earlier in the efforts of two groups of Japanese Americans - the generalized Japanese American community and Japanese American World War II veterans. Its mission is to preserve and make known the Japanese American experience as an integral part of this country's heritage in order to improve understanding and appreciation of America's ethnic and cultural diversity. 

The Japanese American National Museum is a museum of American culture and history as seen through the perspective of one group of Americans - Japanese Americans. We are careful to make the distinction between Japanese and Japanese American (which is a surprise to some visitors who wander in thinking they will be seeing displays of Japanese kimonos or Japanese artwork). It is important that we set our story in context for we don't want visitors to view the Japanese American experience as interesting but not of relevance to themselves as Irish American, American Jews, Latinos, African Americans, etc. Our exhibits and our programs are designed so that while people are learning about Japanese Americans they can also relate events and themes to their own experiences - they can learn about themselves as Americans. 

There is necessarily a tension within a community based museum between the importance of emphasizing the insider perspective in an exhibit and the need to "make known" the Japanese American experience to a wider, more diverse audience. While a Jewish Sports Hall of Fame or a Nisei Accountants Hall of Fame may be important in raising the self-esteem of a particular community, it will probably not appeal much to anyone else. By becoming too internal, we can run the risk of becoming irrelevant. 

Exhibiting History - The Challenges for an exhibit on World War II 

Who's Going to Come? One of the Museum's "must do" exhibits was the story of the segregated 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Nisei linguists of the MIS during World War II. Our concern was the possible narrow appeal of this subject. We knew the exhibit would attract the Nisei veterans as well as World War II military buffs but we had doubts that many others would be interested in coming to the Japanese American National Museum to see a military exhibit. One of our goals, then, was to find a way to shape the exhibit in such a way that it would be of relevance for everyone else, especially nonmilitary types, non Japanese Americans and families and youth. 

Everything but the Kitchen Sink. Many exhibits in culture and history museums are about people and times that are long past. That, obviously, is not the case with an exhibit on World War II - this segment of the community was very much alive and very vocal and persistent in what they felt the exhibit should look like and contain. Ideas and suggestions were often contradictory and if we had displayed everything the veterans requested the exhibit would have been an overwhelming pastiche of items and stories with no room for the visitor to move about. These World War II veterans were at a stage in their life when they were beginning to feel their mortality and often felt that this upcoming exhibit was their last chance to have their story told. As a community based museum the challenge was to try to answer the desires of this community while, at the same time, realizing that exhibits need to have a theme, a coherency if they are to make sense to the visitor, particularly the non veteran. Often times, what was wanted did not fit well into the ultimate direction of the exhibit. 

Design Challenges - Does Everything have to be Khaki? Exhibits not only need to be intellectually engaging, but since by nature they are visual, they also need to look wonderful and interesting. Unfortunately, military artifacts tend to look so "uniform." Whatever the designer came up with tended to look alike - one purple heart looks like any other purple heart, everything was colored in olive drab and khaki, there were no real dramatic icons to distinguish the exhibit, no breath-taking artwork. We also decided that there would be no replicas but only artifacts which belonged to Nisei who served in the military. These artifacts not only tended to look alike but they were quite mundane in appearance - patches, papers, belt buckles. There were no guns, no tanks, no large pieces of equipment that a designer could build an exhibit around. 

Not only were artifacts not particularly exciting to look at but we begin the process of developing this exhibit with nothing much to look at. Most museums have an extensive collection on which much research is done and exhibits emerge. We are a young museum and had no military collection in place at the time. Often times we wrote sections into the exhibit script on speculation and then went looking for the appropriate artifacts. Sometimes it worked out and sometimes we were unable to find anything and had to shrink a particular section, since, without the appropriate artifacts, we had no exhibit. 

(A "tour" of the exhibit "Fighting for Tomorrow" will be part of this section through the use of slides, video clips and narration.) 

Initially the assignment for the curator was to do an exhibit on World War II and the Nisei soldiers. However, a number of Nisei Korean War veterans felt it was time their participation in the military be acknowledged and they wanted to be part of this upcoming exhibit. As a community based institution, it was decided, with this request, to be more inclusive and widen the focus of the exhibit. Now we would be featuring five wars that we are aware Japanese Americans have taken part in - Spanish American, World War I, World War II, Korean War and the Vietnam War. 

The focus for the exhibit was not just World War II but the Japanese American community's continuing struggle for civil rights, this time as seen through their participation in America's wars. The theme was that soldiers of color often have to fight a double battle - one to defend American democracy and the other battle to gain fuller participation for themselves and their families and, in this way, make America a more democratic country. Participation in the military normally led to full rights of citizenship for most immigrant groups. The divergence from this immigrant story was that for Japanese American war veterans this was not the case. While making the story somewhat more unwieldy, the inclusion of this wider perspective helped to set the exhibit in context against a backdrop on ongoing racism against Asians in America. In this way, World War II and the American concentration camps could not be rationalized as due to wartime hysteria. 

The exhibit was also set in a family and community context. Rather than simply a story of soldiers going to war, we designed the exhibit as a community and family story whose life was intersected periodically with episodes of war just as were other American communities. To make this point the opening photograph for the exhibit was not of a soldier in battle but of a soldier with his two young nephews. We also tried to bring in some aspects of the strength of Japanese American family values, community and family membership, identity and responsibility as they sent their Japanese American children off to war with the admonition of "Don't shame the family." We included a section in the exhibit on Nisei childhood with its influences of family, school, sports, and community celebrations. This section posed some challenges for the designer but our school tour docents have found this a useful section to teach around. 

Against the backdrop of racism and war, we brought in family stories. A very long exhibit case is devoted to the story of one family, three of whose four sons served in World War II. Rather than only display military artifacts, with family photos and other family mementos we unfolded the story of a young man coming to a new country, starting a family, raising 5 children, and building a life in America until war and the American concentration camps intersected their lives. We ended the story with the reburial in America after World War II of two of his sons who were killed in action and the citizenship papers of the father who was finally allowed, with other Issei to become naturalized citizens starting in 1952. We called this case "An American Family in War." 

Traditionally exhibits have tended to be static displays of artifacts, photographs and documents accompanied by panels of long explanations. The trend now is to make exhibits more interactive and to build in different means of accessing information. I will list and briefly describe them here and later point them out in the exhibit slides. 

1. Student labels - as a community based museum we were concerned about how accessible such an adult exhibit on war would be to school children. We sprinkled the exhibit with simple questions that had been tested on 7th graders. The questions were designed to be easily answered by the accompanying text panel but were also open ended enough to be turned into discussion questions that could apply to many other communities. Teachers and docents could use these questions as they guided classes through the exhibit. 

2. Resource area - being aware of visitors who wanted more information than could be presented in an exhibit, we set aside an area in the exhibit in which visitors could watch videos, read books and articles, study dossier files on various individuals, and access the Japanese American Military Experience National Data Base. 

3. National Data Base - realizing that there was no way to include everyone's story on the exhibit floor, this is a means of capturing individual "slices of life" in regards to one's military experience and making it available to the public. A questionnaire was devised working with a number of veterans and we've publicized this program so as to invite the participation of any Japanese American who served in the American military, whether wartime or peace, along with Caucasian officers who served with the 100th/442nd RCT. Each individual's questionnaire is set up and accessible to the exhibit viewer on the computer along with his/her photograph. 

4. Veterans Registry Books - this is open to any veteran of military service in any country. A brief questionnaire on their life after the military as well as a Polaroid of them, including any family who has accompanied them, are placed into binders that are accessible to visitors in the resource area. 

5. Bulletin Board - at the end of the exhibit is an area where visitors can write their comments regarding the exhibit as well as leave messages seeking the location of former comrades in the military. 

6. Killed in Action Book - a number of the veterans were insistent that we acknowledge those who were killed in action. Their desire was a separate wall with all the names inscribed on it in the exhibit. However, there was not enough space in the exhibit and it was felt it would detract from the exhibit theme. We still needed to acknowledge these individuals so we developed a large volume with all the names we were aware of that became part of the exhibit. Knowing there were probably a number of errors, we have requested that any additions or corrections be turned in to a docent and a corrected list is being compiled. 

7. Videos - we used three in the exhibit. One was official footage of the 442nd RCT in training. "Something Strong Within" was produced by the museum for an earlier exhibit on the American concentration camps. It is a mixture of official footage and "home movies" of life in camp taken by Japanese Americans with cameras smuggled into camp. This video is used along with a map of all the camps in the United States during World War II to graphically remind the viewers of the double battle these Japanese American soldiers faced. The third video, "Looking Like the Enemy," was produced by the museum specifically for this exhibit. Through very moving interviews with Japanese American combat veterans of World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the horrors of war along with the struggles with racism in the military and in America are graphically illustrated for the exhibit viewer. 

8. Personality Panels - in covering so many wars, the concern was that the exhibit could become too impersonal. So, for each war an individual was selected and his story along with a photo and some artifacts were included in a separate panel embedded within the larger story. 

9. Docents - often times veterans of the MIS and 100th/442nd RCT and the Korean War served as docents for the exhibit. The exhibit was designed to stand on its own but these docents added another dimension as they layered in their own personal experiences for the visitor. I've often said that they are our most precious artifacts and they truly help bring the exhibit to life. Unfortunately, this is a time delineated aspect of the exhibit since they are passing away. 

The Conclusion - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 

Every exhibit should close with something memorable - we have two conclusions for this exhibit. The first ends with Vietnam and the story of a young soldier dying and as he was dying, he asked for tomorrow. The second conclusion is a letter written by a veteran to his grandson. It was decided to include his letter because he took the theme of yesterday, today and tomorrow to pass on to his grandson the values and the lessons he had learned in the hopes that they would be of use to him. This, in many ways, summed up the reasons for this exhibit and for the existence of the Japanese American National Museum.