Event Description & Video Recording

This year’s program celebrated the grand opening of Uprooted! An American Story. The Museum’s longest-running exhibit has undergone a dramatic redesign, incorporating interactive and innovative features. The re-imagined exhibit demonstrates the power of education and preservation through the story of Japanese American incarceration and the fight for reparations, and brings the civil rights movement to the present and the future. The program featured an insightful presentation by Kevin Sayama of C&G Partners, the New York-based creative studio behind the exhibit’s transformative redesign.

The program was followed by timed tours of the exhibit, origami instruction, ikebana demonstrations, presentations on the documents and artifacts from the Japanese American Archival Collection at Sacramento State, and the opportunity to learn about Tsuru for Solidarity from co-founder Satsuki Ina and others.

About Kevin Sayama

Tetsubumi Kevin Sayama is a senior consultant with C&G Partners in New York, leading a team of designers of graphics, exhibits, and media, as well as content developers and producers. He has worked on all phases of museum exhibition design for nearly 30 years at C&G and Ralph Appelbaum Associates as well as a consultant his own projects.

Originally trained as an architect, Kevin was working on affordable family housing in San Francisco and loved it until he realized that if he kept doing that he’d qualify for that housing himself!

As he was on his way out the door to go to law school in 1994, a friend asked him if he’d like to move to New York for the summer to work on an exhibit about the camps at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles. He liked the idea of getting paid to live in New York for a bit before law school so he said yes, though he knew very little about the camps and about the whole experience from his mom and grandmother. It had rarely, if ever, come up at home and certainly he’d never heard about it in school.

Working on America’s Concentration Camps in 1994 opened his eyes and ears to his own history, and that experience working with Karen Ishizuka and Bob Nakamura got him to ask questions about his own past. And it also dawned on him that this was his mission in life: to marry history and storytelling through design.

One of the first things he saw at the start when he walked into the California Museum’s previous Uprooted! exhibit was the home movies compilation Something Strong Within developed for the America’s Concentration Camps exhibition way back in 1994. It then really struck him that working on refreshing Uprooted! was about coming home again.

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA TIME OF REMEMBRANCE (NCTOR) CHAPTERS

• Florin JACL hyperlink to: https://www.florinjacl.com/
• Lodi JACL hyperlink to: https://jacl.org/
• Placer JACL hyperlink to:  http://www.placerjacl.org/
• Sacramento JACL hyperlink to:  https://www.facebook.com/sacjacl/

 EDUCATIONAL PARTNERS

The educational partners have continued to provide support in facilitating the program activities that provide students from throughout Northern California with first-hand accounts of the Japanese American experience during World War II, so participants can explore concepts of citizenship, constitutionality, and redress.

• THE CALIFORNIA MUSEUM:  For the past 21 years, the Museum has hosted the program, where more than 5,000 students from throughout northern California hear first-hand accounts from Japanese American survivors and others about the importance of valuing and speaking up for the rights of themselves and others.

• ELK GROVE UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD AND SUPERINTENDENT: For the past 40 years, the only California School Education Board to pass a Resolution to commemorate the Time of Remembrance program, sponsor teacher training, develop curriculum, and provide student education with the Florin JACL and other community partners.
• CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO, LIBRARY, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.  With contributions from the community, volunteers and fundraising, the library has preserved thousands of documents and artifacts, sponsored exhibits and educated countless students and scholars both online and in the library.  Many of the artifacts in the California Museum exhibit “Uprooted! An American Story” come from the Special Collections.

 Sponsors and Donors

 Gold Level ($1,000-$1,499)

Lorna Fong, in loving memory of Mary Kawano Fong

Silver Level ($500-$999)

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Walter & Kathy Menda

Nichi Bei Foundation

Genevieve Shiroma

In memory of Toguchi no Bachan (anonymous)

Bronze Level ($250-$499)

Black Oak Animal Hospital

Mataga of Stockton

Mike Namba

Andy Noguchi & Twila Tomita

Eileen & Howard Sarasohn

Floyd & Ruth Shimomura

Sharon Takeda

Titus and Donna Toyama

Christine and Stan Umeda

In memory of George Waegell

Florin-SV JACL Chapter

Lodi JACL Chapter

Placer County JACL Chapter

Sacramento JACL Chapter

Supporter ($100-$249)

Aleck and Nancy Darr

Judy S. Fukuman

HFS

Vickie Hayashigatani

In memory of Elaine Hironaka

Kerry Honda Marini and Family

Satsuki Ina

Honor and in memory of Dorie Kobayashi

Gordon Kunisaki

Derrick Lim

Lynn and Brooks Matsuda

Fusae Miyamoto

Paula Mune

Sharon & Dan Okada

Eileen Namba Otsuji

Janet Sakata

Miko Sawamura, President, Sacramento JACL Chapter

Ernest Takahashi

Sue Teranishi

Julie Thomas

Tsuru for Solidarity

Katie Uemura

Mariko Yamada & Janlee Wong

Friend ($50-$99)

David and Sandy Kataoka Fong

Aileen Nishio

Geri and John Handa

Amanda Meeker

John and Elaine Yoshikawa