Qualla: Japanese American National Museum

Japanese American National Museum: Introduction

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Justefrain, CC BY 3.0. The same building where government officials processed Japanese American families for internment camps in 1942 now stands as the founding home of a museum dedicated to telling their full story. The 1925 Hompa Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles's Little Tokyo neighborhood holds that paradox deliberately. When the Japanese American National Museum opened there in 1992, the community had spent years fighting for recognition of the injustice they suffered during World War II. They chose to preserve this painful site not to forget, but to transform it into something that would tell the truth about 130 years of Japanese American experience in the United States.

Image: Justefrain | CC BY 3.0

Japanese American National Museum: From Temple to Processing Center to Museum

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ricardo Diaz, CC BY 2.0. The temple's journey mirrors that of its community. Built in 1925 as a place of Buddhist worship, the building was commandeered by the federal government during World War II to process Japanese Americans for forced relocation to internment camps. Families who had prayed in its sa...

Image: Ricardo Diaz | CC BY 2.0

Japanese American National Museum: Letters from Camp

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nserrano, CC BY-SA 3.0. Among the museum's most poignant collections are hundreds of letters written by children in internment camps to Clara Breed, a San Diego librarian who gave stamped, addressed postcards to young library patrons as they boarded buses for the camps. The children wrote of dust storms...

Image: Nserrano | CC BY-SA 3.0

Japanese American National Museum: The Ireicho Project

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matsujima, CC BY-SA 4.0. Completed in 2022, the Ireicho represents the first comprehensive listing of the over 125,000 persons of Japanese ancestry incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II. The museum printed a physical book and displayed it for internees and their families to acknowledge,...

Image: Matsujima | CC BY-SA 4.0

Japanese American National Museum: Standing Up

Fri, 23 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nandaro, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 2025, the museum refused to comply with Executive Order 14253, which targeted museums' diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The decision cost the museum $1.7 million in federal funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the H...

Image: Nandaro | CC BY-SA 4.0