California State University, Dominguez Hills’ (CSUDH) Library Archives and Special Collections has received a $100,000 archival grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP) to continue its work on the CSU Japanese American Digitization Project (CSUJAD).
The CCLPEP grant will help fund CSUJAD projects and the digitalization of more than 6,500 additional records related to Japanese Americans during the mid-20th century, including oral histories from California State University, Fullerton’s (CSUF) Center for Oral and Public History, and collections from Claremont Colleges Libraries.
“The CSUJAD project has allowed us to develop a functional and useful database,” said Greg Williams, director of the CSUDH archives and principal investigator of the grant. “With this CCLPEP funding, we will develop a more complex understanding of the people and events that led to one of our nation’s greatest infringements on civil liberties [the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII].”
Since its launch in 2015, a total of 20 higher education institutions have contributed materials from their archives to the CSUJAD, including 15 California State University (CSU) campuses.
The CCLPEP grant will also be used to create public educational outreach activities, such as a professional development workshop at CSUDH for 11th grade teachers regarding civil liberty issues, and a teaching guide focused on the struggle of Japanese Americans, their internment in the Tule Lake Segregation Center, and its effect on their civil liberties.
To fund the CSUJAD and specific projects, CSUDH has previously received a two-year $321,554 from the U.S. National Park Service in 2015, two grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a $39,200 grant from the John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation in March 2017.
Archival materials from the CSUJAD are currently on display through Aug. 24 in the exhibition “…And They Came For Us,” which is featured in the Cultural Arts Gallery in CSUDH’s University Library. The exhibit is focused on Executive Order 9066, which led to the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII,
