Courage & Compassion
Courage and Compassion: Our Shared Story of the Japanese American World War II Experience, Oberlin, Ohio
Alice Imamoto Takemoto, 92, spoke to students about her experiences coming to Oberlin College in 1942 after being taken from her home in California to an incarceration camp for Japanese Americans.
Created by the Go For Broke National Education Center, this 2,000 square foot exhibit told stories of communities that stood up to support Japanese Americans during World War II. We supplemented the core exhibit with additional panels, artifacts, and programming that related to Oberlin’s history of welcoming Japanese American students during the war. Putting together a team of student researchers and community and college stakeholders, we used the exhibit as the center for a series of initiatives that encouraged visitors to understand the relevance of this history for today. We developed and supervised field trips to the exhibit for more than 600 local students and organized and led an institute for secondary school teachers on teaching internment history. We also organized a months-long series of concerts, film screenings, and lectures that explored the wartime experience of Oberlin’s Japanese American students, contemporary debates about civil liberties and sanctuary cities, and the power of communities to stand up against discrimination.
“When Oberlin Opened Its Arms to Japanese American Students,” Ideastream, National Public Radio, Feb. 22, 2018
“The exhibit and programming are definitely high points of my time at Oberlin. I know that many people engaged with the exhibit and programming in many ways that have been highly meaningful and provocative.”
Ann Sherif, Professor of East Asian Studies, Oberlin College
“Learning facts and seeing photos of this history is one thing, but hearing the personal stories made me realize how far of an impact the incarceration camps had beyond the camps themselves. It made the information I had previously known seem so much more real and present.”
Oberlin undergraduate student
