SAN FRANCISCO — The National Japanese American Historical Society has been awarded a grant through the National Writing Project’s Building a More Perfect Union grant program for humanities organizations across the U.S. to assist in recovering from interruptions to operations due to the coronavirus pandemic.
As part of the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grantmaking for Organizations at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Building a More Perfect Union program funds organizations to develop programming in anticipation of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the U.S.
“We are delighted to be a part of America’s recovery, and we are honored to be a recipient of a grant awarded by the National Writing Project. It comes as an opportune time for us to gear up to receive visitors and explore with them the meaning and legacy of the Japanese American Redress movement,” noted NJAHS Executive Director Rosalyn Tonai.
The NJAHS’ project, “Japanese American Redress: Reckoning and Recovery,” will develop an interactive multimedia kiosk display at the Military Intelligence Service Historic Learning Center, which will inform and engage the public in a lesson of democracy — the exploration of the Japanese American call for restitution, the governmental means by which it was pursued and the subsequent passage of the watershed Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
NJAHS will design and produce interactive elements that draw upon first-person narratives, primary documents, visual records and scholarly analysis.
“Each project contributes to a shared national conversation in important ways,” said Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, executive director of the National Writing Project. “Building a More Perfect Union recognizes the unique role that local, regional and cross-regional humanities organizations play in understanding and making visible fuller stories of our national experience.”
To learn more about the NJAHS’s Building a More Perfect Union grant, please visit www.njahs.org.
