JACL/HP was awarded a $10,000 grant from CA Humanities with a matching grant from the Go For Broke Foundation. The grant will help fund a film project,Monterey: Profiles in Courage and Compassion (M:PCC) that is tied to some recently discovered documents in the Heritage Project’s archives. The documents are original petitions signed by citizens of the City of Monterey who welcomed Japanese families back to Monterey after the last internment camps were shuttered in 1945. Barbara Watanabe, former vice president of strategic advancement for the Go for Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC) secured the grant and will provide continuing advice and guidance as project director.
As currently planned, the Heritage Project will interview descendants of petition signators and preserve this story in a 26-minute video. Tim Thomas, a member of both the Heritage Project committee and JACL board, discovered the petition documents in the CJAH archives. Tim and Carolyn McCombs are project co-managers for M:PCC and will be assisted by the Heritage Project committee and a project advisory group.
Barbara Watanabe and GFBNEC also helped to secure a grant from the National Park Service’s Japanese American Confinement Sites (JACS) Grant Program for 2016. This grant will bring together ten communities chronicling human experiences during the World War II era that involved citizens who offered a helping hand to Japanese Americans. The ten communities are: Monterey, CA; Oberlin, OH; Chicago, IL; Peoria, IL; St. Paul, MN; Rochester, MN; Truchas, NM; Kingsburg, CA; Honolulu, HI; and Salem, OR. Each community will tell its story based on graphics, documents, and artifacts. This 10-community project will also entail a traveling exhibit built around historical context, WWII events, and interactive displays that explain the many challenges that faced Japanese American communities during WWII.
