Day of Remembrance 2016

Japanese American Incarceration and the Art of Identity with Roger Shimomura

Japanese American Incarceration and the Art of Identity with Roger Shimomura

Friday, February 19, 2016
First Floor Center and Warner Bros. Theater

The museum will mark on the 74th anniversary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066, authorizing the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WW II, with an evening of programming.

 

Schedule

5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. – Special Displays (First Floor Center)
 
Visitors can stop by at a cart display to explore objects from the museum’s teaching collection and try on an army jacket based on the Japanese American 442 unit, or add a red stitch to the good luck belt of 1,000 stitches that imprisoned women within the camps would often make for their sons before they went off to war. Trading cards and comic pamphlets will be provided by our museum’s Youth Civic Engagement Program.
 
Curators will also show objects out-of-storage highlighting the museum’s Japanese American history collection. Information on the National Japanese American Memorial maintenance project will be presented by the Japanese American Citizens League and information from the Embassy of Japan.

 

6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. – Conversation, Performance & Donation Ceremony (Warner Bros. Theater)

Roger Shimomura, a multifaceted Japanese American artist who works as a painter, printmaker, performance artist, professor and collector and is a camp survivor, will donate objects from his time in the camp. Following the donation ceremony journalist David Ono will lead a discussion with Shimomura about his life in the camp and his art.  A performance by Regie Cabico, a Filipino American poet and spoken word artist, who has appeared on HBO and MTV, will conclude the evening.
 

8:15 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. – Book Signing

Roger Shimomura will sign copies 

 

Sponsors

Lead Sponsor: 
National Japanese American Memorial Foundation

Additional Support: 
Japanese American Citizens League (National & DC chapter)
Japanese American Veterans Association

 

Press Release

2016 Day of Remembrance press release (PDF) 

 

 

Related Online exhibit: A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution

This event is free and open to the public. The closest Metro station is Federal Triangle.
Location: Warner Bros. Theater, First Floor
National Museum of American History
(use the Constitution Avenue entrance)
Directions

For more information:  Americanhistoryapacollection@si.edu