Fresno State’s Henry Madden Library hosts “9066: Japanese American Voices from the Inside,” a series of exhibitions and events commemorating the 75th anniversary of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans with a focus on those from the San Joaquin Valley.

The exhibitions open Feb. 19, exactly 75 years to the day from when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing exclusion areas in preparation for the removal of 120,000 Japanese Americans (most of whom were citizens) from the West Coast.

Highlights include traveling exhibitions, art objects and objects made and used by the families in the camps. Exhibition locations and highlights are:

Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery

• “Art of Survival: Enduring the Turmoil of Tule Lake,” a traveling exhibition, Feb. 19 - April 30
• San Diego artist Wendy Maruyama’s 11' x 4' Tag Project stack of ID tag reproductions from Tule Lake

Pete P. Peters Ellipse Balcony Gallery

• “Connecting the Pieces: Dialogues on the Amache Archaeology Collection,” a traveling exhibition, Feb. 19 - April 30
• Robert Ogata drawings of the Gila River War Relocation Center

Special Collections Research Center, Woodward Family Reading Room

Feb. 19 - June 2

• Artworks by Reiko Fujii, Judy Shintani and Patricia Wakida
• Poetry of Violet de Cristoforo
• Elaborate architectural renderings of an imagined Fresno Assembly Center
• Objects made and used in the camps and profiles of individual families
• A special section on the military contributions of Japanese Americans during World War II from the Go For Broke National Education Center in Los Angeles

Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children’s Literature

• Display of children’s books on the Japanese American internment

Exhibition Events

Fresno State CineCulture Documentary — “Resistance at Tule Lake”
5:30 p.m., Feb. 17, 2017
Peters Education Center Auditorium
(West of Save Mart Center in the Student Recreation Center Building)

Discussion with the director, Konrad Aderer, will follow the screening.

Japanese American Internment Wikipedia Edit-a-thon
3 – 5 p.m., March 14
Outside the Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery in the Henry Madden Library

Noontime Concert — “Japanese American Incarceration 1942-1946”
12:10 – 12:50 p.m., March 17
Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery in the Henry Madden Library

Nikiko Masumoto — A special adaptation of “What We Could Carry”
5:30 – 7:30 p.m., April 5
Table Mountain Rancheria Reading Room in the Henry Madden Library

Friends of the Madden Library — Talk with Karen Korematsu
6 p.m., April 7
Henry Madden Library

For more information about the exhibition, contact Tammy Lau, head of the Madden Library Special Collections Research Center, at 278.2595 or tammyl@csufresno.edu.

Related Links:

Madden Library event page