Uprooted: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans

Curated by Christine Hult-Lewis

The Bancroft Library Gallery, UC Berkeley, October 2021-June 2022

The year 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of a grave injustice in American society: the issuance of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, mandating the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and into incarceration camps inland for the duration of World War II. This exhibition tells some of the stories of that traumatic time. It is structured as an interplay between official government directives--executive orders, mandatory forms, official photographs--and the response of Japanese Americans through their drawings, diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and reminiscences. We also included the stories of some significant allies in the UC Berkeley community who tried to help or at least mitigate the worst effects of the forced removal and incarceration.