This year marks the 80th anniversary of the closing of the last Japanese American internment camp from World War II. On Wednesday, a traveling exhibition of over 400 stories, photographs, and artworks of Japanese American incarcerees made its way to Oberlin. “Contested Histories: Preserving and Sharing a Community Collection” is on display in the academic commons and first floor gallery of the Mary Church Terrell Main Library until March 15, welcoming students and the Oberlin community to engage in learning and conversations about these previously silenced stories.

“Contested Histories” first found a home at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. Erin Aoyama, visiting assistant professor of Comparative American Studies, worked at JANM for five years and collaborated with Clement Hanami, vice president of exhibitions and art director of JANM, in order to bring the exhibition to Oberlin. Aoyama described the impact that she hopes it will have at the community level.

“A lot of us who are children or grandchildren of people who were incarcerated didn’t hear these stories from our family members,” Aoyama said. “So, I hope it’s a chance to … learn and see things like literal artifacts and art. For everyone at Oberlin, I also hope it’s a chance to start asking other kinds of questions about Japanese American history, to feel like it’s okay to not know a lot.”

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in 1942, over 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast were forced to evacuate their homes and relocate to internment camps on 48-hour notice. Over the course of WWII, Oberlin College took in 40 Japanese American students, many of whom came directly from internment camps. 

“Oberlin College was a sort of a safe haven,” Hanami said. “It’s a very good place to take this exhibition to. The next generation is an important audience to share this with, because they become the torchbearers for future generations.”

The collection was first put up for sale at Rago Auctions in 2015. This outraged the Japanese American community and sparked the creation of protest groups who formed the Facebook page “Japanese American History: NOT for Sale.” The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation joined in this movement, attempting to negotiate with Rago Auctions to purchase the items before they went on sale for the public. 

“The worst thing that could happen [from the foundation’s perspective] is people could start cherry picking pieces from the collection,” Hanami said. “This collection would then be broken up [into pieces] … or you wouldn’t know who the buyers were and what they were buying it for.”

The board members of JANM were also in discussion about how to save the collection, and George Takei, chairman emeritus on the JANM Board of Trustees, decided that the museum would purchase the collection in full and keep it intact. An immediate issue they encountered was that the pieces did not come with labels, context, or forms of identification. The next step for JANM was to get as many eyes on the collection as possible.

“We would go to Days of Remembrance,” Hanami said. “We would go to pilgrimages where people make these journeys to visit places where they used to live. … It was also interesting to see how we were able to find different stories just through the use of social media. … From there, we went on a national tour.”

When thinking about how to present the exhibition at Oberlin, Heath Patten, visual resources collection curator, and Ken Grossi, College archivist, prioritized narration and interactivity.

“You have to stay at a certain distance [at most exhibitions],” Patten said. “Here, you can get over the displays; you can see a reflection on the photos. It has such a powerful feel, [like it’s saying,] ‘Let me share my narrative. Let me share my story.’” 

One goal of bringing the exhibition to as many areas populated with Japanese Americans as possible was to find relatives of individuals who were photographed so that they could be identified. Aoyama discussed the significance of being able to attach a name to the items.

“Part of the exhibit is this collection of binders … that have traveled with this everywhere, and you’ll see notes of people saying, this is my dad, and this is his name,” she said. “It is not an uncommon experience for Japanese Americans to find photos of their loved ones in government archives with no names attached to them. It’s not always for nefarious reasons, but there is a prick and a pain, and there also can be reckoning and healing when it comes to being able to put a name to these photos.”

The exhibition provides an opportunity for Japanese Americans who were in the internment camps to revisit a critical moment in their lives and know that their stories are remembered. Roy Ebihara, a long-time Oberlin resident, was eight years old when he was sent to the camps. 

“We had difficult times,” Ebihara said. “I missed two years of education. When we came to Cleveland in January of ’44, I was placed in first grade. I was 10 years old.”

Alongside marking the 80th anniversary of the end of the internment camps, this year will be the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Aoyama reflected on what it meant to think about these two in tandem.

“I keep putting those anniversaries next to each other, especially in the context of what we see happening with ICE today and the state of the U.S. right now,” Aoyama said. “I’m excited to be able to gather and talk about what it means to celebrate 250 years and acknowledge 80 years, and then balance the ongoingness of it all, too.”