Preserving Important Voices

[aminaas1576]

In building partnerships for the Internet Archive, Hanamura said the best pitch is always personal.

She would often hold up the book, Executive order 9066: The Internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans and explain how, after discovering it in her local library in sixth grade, it changed her life. The book is out of print and hard to find. When her son was taking a college class in Asian American identity, it would have been perfect for him. “But his generation believes that if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist,” Hanamura would say. “The only place he can access this book online is the Internet Archive.” She could go on to suggest there are more “valuable, precious” books that need to be available online to people everywhere in the world.

In a tribute to her father’s service in a WWII all-Japanese unit, Hanamura produced a documentary, “Honor Bound: A Personal Journey, the Story of the 100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team.” Hanamura also phone number library became involved in helping Densho, a Seattle-based nonprofit, build a Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration materials at the Internet Archive. Her own mother was 14 when she was incarcerated in wartime camps and today, at 95, is one of the few remaining survivors—a story Hanamura told for the Archive’s 25th anniversary.


Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration
“The people who knew and experienced the Japanese American incarceration are dying in great numbers,” Hanamura said. “I really wanted to make sure that the most important voices, the most important literature and research was captured and preserved for all time.”

Hanamura was able to secure support from the U.S. Department of Interior and National Park Services’ Japanese American Confinement Site program to partially fund the effort.