Article reveals plans to ‘de-emphasize’
such historical events as Japanese American incarceration.
By P.C. Staff
The Japanese American Citizens League released a statement Nov. 4 demanding accountability from the National Archives and Records Administration’s Colleen Shogan and a meeting with the archivist following a Wall Street Journal report.
In an Oct. 29 article, business-oriented newspaper reported that Shogan had “ordered the removal of prominent references” at the National Archives Museum to not just the government’s treatment of Native Americans but also “the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II from planned exhibits.”
The article also stated that a “proposed image of Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. be cut from a planned ‘Step Into History’ photo booth in the Discovery Center” and that “Shogan and her top advisers told employees to remove Dorothea Lange’s photos of Japanese-American incarceration camps from a planned exhibit because the images were too negative and controversial,” (Editor’s note: WSJ subscribers may read the article here.)
In its news release, the JACL stated “its concern that the National Archives is pursuing a policy of erasing Japanese American and other histories from the public record. The National Archives, of all places, has a profound responsibility to the unadulterated preservation of the full history of the United States of America.”
JACL also said it had requested a meeting with Shogan to “give her the opportunity to defend these allegations” and further stated that if “these allegations prove true, there can be no other path than for her immediate resignation.”
Meantime, the Japanese American National Museum’s President and CEO Ann Burroughs also reacted to the WSJ report. In the JANM news release, Burroughs said, “We cannot ignore what may be considered to be uncomfortable truths simply because they are ‘too negative and controversial’ and might cause discomfort for some, and as the repository of this nation’s documented history, neither should the National Archive.”
The JACL’s entire statement can be read here.
