Funding

California State University Japanese American Digitization Project Grant History

The CSUJAD project is supported through the generous funding of various grant agencies in combination with the institutional support provided by each partner institution. The grants received to date are listed below in descending order from 2014 to the present.

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Foundations Grant

PW-51585-14 | $40,000 | 2014-2016

This initial CSUJAD grant was awarded to CSU Dominguez Hills to plan and start the CSU Japanese American Digitization Project to bring together archival materials online relating to the history of Japanese Americans in California and elsewhere, not only covering the WWII incarceration, but pre- and post-war information too. The participating partners came from the following CSU campuses: Dominguez Hills, Fresno, Fullerton, Northridge, Sacramento, and San Jose. The project commenced with a two-day symposium that brought scholars, archivists and technical people together to discuss issues and generate a successful pathway for project and web portal development.

CSUDH Asian American Digitization Grant

CSUDH Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Grant

$10,000 | 2014

National Park Service (NPS) Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program

P15AP00119 | $287,980 | 2015-2018

The participating CSU campuses included: Bakersfield, Channel Islands, Dominguez Hills, East Bay, Fresno, Fullerton, Long Beach, Northridge, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Francisco, San Diego, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, and Sonoma.

The following work was completed:

Digitization and metadata creation for 12,711 individual records;
Digitization of 500 camp publications with OCR totaling 610 individual records;
370 oral histories audio files with over 247 transcripts;
Translation of 50 publications – 159 archival items (17 full translations of Japanese to English and 142 English summaries of Japanese letters and documents complete with the appropriate metadata analyzing the contents.

National Endowment for the Humanities Implementation Grant

PW-234690 | $260,000 | 2016-2019

Funds were used to digitize 4,500 records from the CSU campuses at Dominguez Hills, Fresno, Fullerton, Sacramento, San Jose, San Luis Obispo, Sonoma and the University of California at Santa Barbara. A CSUJAD digital exhibition was developed and a lesson plan was generated focused on loyalty determination in the WRA camps, portions of which were added to the NEH’s Edsitement!
An exhibition of archival materials took place at CSUDH to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 entitled “And Then They Came For Us…” running from February through August 2017. It consisted of 250 archival objects from the CSUDH collection and other interpretive items included 20 paintings of contemporary art and War era scenes, arts and crafts from the WRA camps, 20 newspapers, 30 magazines, and several books. The world premiere and looped video entitled When Rabbit Left the Moon, a “haiku” version of Emiko Omori’s Sundance Film Festival award winning film, Rabbit in the Moon, was also included. We were pleased Ms. Omori allowed us to use the film in the exhibition. CSUDH held an all-day symposium with Satsuki Ina, Tom Ikeda and other special guest speakers as well as associated events, such as film, music, and lecture series. A number of similar exhibitions took place on the other CSU campuses using downloadable posters developed to contextualize the archival materials.

Haynes Foundation

$39,200 | 2017-2018

The Ninomiya Photo Studio Access Project re-housed and inventoried a collection of approximately 10,000 packets of photographic negatives documenting the daily life of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles during the middle of the 20th century preserving this personal aspect of their history. The funding created a guide/finding aid to the collection and generated appropriate metadata that was used for item-level digitization.

California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP)

CCLPEP 16-6 |$100,000 | 2017-2018

CSUJAD was enhanced with the digitization and cataloging of more than 7,000 historical items focused on Japanese Americans during the mid-20th century, specifically relating to the WWII incarceration. Participants included the CSU campuses at Dominguez Hills and Fullerton along with the Claremont University Libraries. Other aspects of the grant included two summer workshops, one for elementary and one for secondary teachers, focused on teaching Japanese American history using archival materials and the resources developed for CSUJAD. An exhibition of archival items, entitled, “Civil Liberties Tested—Roots of Activism—Japanese American Incarceration, the Watts Rebellion, and the Zoot Suit Riots/Chicano Activism,” was also developed at CSUDH.

National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)

RM-100282-18 | $238,520 | 2018-2021

A consortium of several California archives is digitizing and describing textual documents, images, and oral histories that shed light on the removal of 120,000 law-abiding U.S. residents of Japanese descent during World War II to enhance online discoverability and unite these collections through the CSU-sponsored Web site at: http://www.csujad.com. The partners include the CSU campuses at Dominguez Hills, Fullerton, Monterey Bay, Stanislaus as well as the California Historical Society, Eastern California Museum, Go For Broke Foundation, Historical Society of Long Beach, Palos Verdes Public Library and the Whittier Library. The Los Angeles artist, Alan Nakagawa, thoroughly researched the Ninomiya Studio Collection in 2018 and completed over 20 watercolors based on the photographs. He then led art workshops for high school and college students in the Spring 2019 resulting in the creation of a “Ninomiya Zine” and an unanticipated exhibition in the CSUDH Art Gallery entitled “Unfinished Proof Ninomiya.” A public presentation and scanning day took place at the Gardena Valley Japanese Cultural Institute.

Haynes Foundation

$40,000 | 2019-2020

The Los Angeles Japanese American History and Activist Collection Access Project is documenting the stories and lives of Japanese Americans in Los Angeles before, during and after the mass removal and incarceration that took place during World War II. The project is generating finding aids and descriptive metadata for several archival collections, which include topics related to incarceration, activism to gain redress, and how individuals dealt with a government and populace that didn’t want them present in the country.

California Civil Liberties Public Education Program

CCLPEP 17-204 | $86,310 | 2019-2020

This project is digitizing and cataloging over 5,000 archival items of historical materials related to Japanese Americans during the mid- 20th century/World War II era. The project partners include the CSU campuses at Dominguez Hills and Fullerton. A teaching guide was developed that examines the Japanese American court cases that challenged the WWII curfew/mass removal and made it to the Supreme Court looking at the strategies used to enlist the judicial branch of the American government in their cause. A public event and scanning day is being planned to engage the community.

National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program

P19AP00223 | $282,102 | 2019-2021

The project will deliver over 6,200 fully cataloged digital objects and over 25 oral histories through CSUJAD and is providing an opportunity to update and revamp the project website. Partners include the CSU campuses at Dominguez Hills, Fullerton and Sacramento as well as the Eastern California Museum and California Historical Society. Using the technical workflow established with the previous NPS grant, the digital objects created will be harvested by the California Digital Library for exposure in Calisphere and the Digital Public Library of America to extend access to wider audiences and preservation. Funds will also be used to transcribe oral histories and plan/ implement a digital exhibition to contextualize, interpret and enhance understanding of the collections and improve the user experience.

California Civil Liberties Public Education Program

CCLPEP-17-325 | $100,000 | 2020-2021

CSUJAD is expanding its digitization and teaching program to compare and contrast the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II with the attempts by the U.S. Government to suppress dissent and immigration during the era known as the Red Scare (1940-1960). The project will digitize and describe over 4,500 archival objects as well as create a teaching guide following the California History-Social Science Content Standards/Framework and an update of the CSUJAD website. Materials to be digitized include family, camp and organization records dealing with the WWII incarceration, redress, the red scare and associated civil liberties violations.

Webpage Note

This CSUJAD project and web portal were supported by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program, and later from the National Endowment for the Humanities and other generous funding agencies. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Department of the Interior. This material received Federal financial assistance for the preservation and interpretation of U.S. confinement sites where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Age Discrimination Act of 1975, as amended, the U.S. Department of the Interior prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability or age in its federally funded assisted projects. If you believe you have been discriminated against in any program, activity, or facility as described above, or if you desire further information, please write to, Office of Equal Opportunity, National Park Service, 1201 Eye Street, NW (2740), Washington, DC 20005.