Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project facts for kids
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| Founded | 1996 |
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| Headquarters | Seattle, United States |
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Densho is a special organization based in Seattle, Washington. Its main goal is to save and share the history of what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II. They want to make sure everyone learns from this history to help create a fairer world today.
Densho collects many important things. These include video interviews, old photos, documents, and other original materials. They focus on the time during World War II when many Japanese Americans were forced into special camps. Densho offers a free online collection of these materials. They also have an online encyclopedia about important Japanese Americans and related topics. Plus, they create helpful lessons for schools.
Contents
What is Densho?
The word denshō (伝承) comes from the Japanese language. It means "to pass on to future generations." This organization started in 1996. Its first big goal was to gather personal stories from Japanese Americans. These were people who were held in camps during World War II.
Over time, Densho's work grew. They now aim to "educate, preserve, collaborate, and inspire action." They use modern digital tools and good ways to save old records. This helps them collect, record, and share their video stories, documents, photos, and old newspapers. These materials show how over 120,000 people of Japanese descent were held without a fair trial during the war.
Tom Ikeda was the first director of Densho. He retired in 2022. Naomi Kawamura took over as the new leader.
How Densho is Organized
Densho is a nonprofit organization. This means it doesn't make money for owners. It was started in Seattle in 1996. It began as a project of the Japanese American Chamber of Commerce of Washington State. In 2002, it became its own independent group.
Densho has a Board of Trustees with nine members. They also have a team of 17 staff members. Naomi Ostwald Kawamura leads this team as the Executive Director. Many volunteers and college students help with their programs. Densho gets money from special grants, yearly fundraising events, and donations from people.
Awards and Recognition
Densho has won many awards for its important work. They received the first NPower Innovation Award. This was for their amazing use of technology. They also got an award from the American Library Association for their online history work. The Washington State Historical Society gave them the David Douglas Award.
Their former Executive Director, Tom Ikeda, also received many honors. He got a Humanities Washington Award for his great work in the humanities. He also received the Japanese American National Museum Founders’ Award. These awards show how much Densho and its leaders have helped share important history.
What Densho Does
Densho's online collection has almost two thousand hours of video interviews. These interviews are organized and have written versions. There are also eighty thousand old photos and documents. The website also offers free lessons for social studies classes.
Over nine hundred video interviews share people's experiences. They talk about life in the ten main camps run by the War Relocation Authority. They also cover other detention places. Densho also interviews Japanese Americans who were not held in camps. They talk to white employees from the camps and non-Japanese Americans. These people saw the forced removal or supported the movement in the 1980s to make things right.
Important people like Norman Mineta and Daniel Inouye are in the collection. But Densho wants to capture stories from all kinds of Japanese Americans. They continue to interview people who lived through the camps. They also talk to others who can describe how the forced removal affected lives. Their bigger goal is to teach everyone in America why this mass detention was wrong. They hope a similar unfairness will never happen to another group in the future.
Densho also holds public events, like talks by authors. They work with other groups too. These include the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience and the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. Densho helps other groups collect and save their own oral histories. This helps connect the Japanese American experience with other stories. These are stories of unfair treatment, racism, and stereotyping that many groups have faced, both in the past and today.
Densho offers lessons that explore important topics like civil liberties. For example, one lesson helps students understand how conflicts about immigration start. Another lesson, "Dig Deep," helps students think about how the media covered the Japanese American incarceration. They ask, "How can people in a democracy get all the facts to be good citizens?" These lessons help students think critically. They also teach respect for everyone's rights.
The Densho Encyclopedia
The Densho Encyclopedia is a free online resource for everyone. It covers many important ideas, people, events, and groups. All of these are connected to the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. The encyclopedia also shares the history of Japanese immigration to the United States. It talks about unfair laws and treatment before World War II. It also covers how Japanese Americans worked to get justice and payments in the years after the camps.
Brian Niiya is the content director at Densho. He is the editor of the encyclopedia. Experts, students, journalists, and people who helped tell the Japanese American story write the articles. Other experts review these articles.
The Densho Encyclopedia first went online in 2012. It had about 360 articles then. Now, it has almost 1,500 articles. It also includes photos, documents, and clips from Densho’s video interviews. The Densho Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration was added in 2017. Funding for this project came from the California State Library and the National Park Service. Most of the content can be used and shared by others under a special license.
See also
- Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial
- Empty Chair Memorial
- Day of Remembrance (Japanese Americans)
- Fred Korematsu Day
- Go for Broke Monument
- Harada House
- Japanese American Memorial to Patriotism During World War II
- National Japanese American Veterans Memorial Court
- Sakura Square
- U.S.-Japan Council
