The National Veterans Network and partners have opened a new traveling exhibit at San Francisco’s Presidio that honors Japanese American soldiers who fought for the United States in World War II while their families were held in government-run internment camps, according to the Associated Press report.
The exhibit, called “I am an American: The Nisei Soldier Experience,” opened in San Francisco after its title was drawn from a sign posted to a Japanese American storefront in Oakland, California, the day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The show’s focus is the Nisei generation—second-generation Japanese Americans—who enlisted to serve the country as the federal government labeled people of Japanese ancestry “alien enemies” and sent many of them to camps.
Organizers said the exhibit is built from family-provided materials meant to preserve stories of wartime service for younger generations. The AP report described the exhibit as a 1,500-square-foot display featuring family photos, mementos and short bios submitted by relatives, along with specific artifacts tied to individual service members.
Among the items highlighted is a travel bag belonging to Sgt. Gary Uchida, marked with drawings of his native Hawaii and places he went while in the Army. The exhibit also displays a U.S. Army identification card on which Oregon-born George S. Hara wrote “American” under nationality, and it includes a note holder made from lumber scraps by Rihachi Mayewaki while imprisoned at Jerome camp in Arkansas, marked with an American bald eagle and a blue star banner with three stars representing Mayewaki’s sons.
The AP report said the exhibit’s curator Christine Sato-Yamazaki, executive director of the National Veterans Network and co-curator, tied the display to the experience of families navigating national identity and loyalty after the war. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the exhibit, Sato-Yamazaki said the father was “incredibly proud he had three sons serving in the American army,” and the exhibit includes the garrison cap worn by her grandfather, Tech. Sgt. Dave Kawagoye.
The report said the exhibit portrays how Japanese Americans joined both highly decorated but segregated units—including the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Infantry Battalion—and also worked as linguists in the Military Intelligence Service. It cited estimates that about 33,000 Japanese Americans fought in World War II, while the U.S. government shipped an estimated 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry to camps, and it said thousands of those incarcerated were elderly or children too young to understand accusations of treason. The AP report also said the United States didn’t offer a formal apology until 1988.
In addition to the general histories, the AP report highlighted Staff Sgt. Robert Kuroda, whose family story includes both wartime service and discrimination at home. The report said Kuroda enlisted after being unable to get work in Hawaii because of his ancestry, and it described how he advanced through heavy enemy gunfire on Oct. 20, 1944, to take out two machine gun nests after helping liberate Bruyères in France, before being killed by sniper fire at age 21.
According to the AP report, Kuroda was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, later upgraded to the Medal of Honor, and the exhibit displays his Medal of Honor and a high school class ring. The report said the ring had been missing until 2021, when metal detector hobbyist Sébastien Roure found it buried in a forest near Bruyères; Roure then worked with the Kurodas to return the Farrington High School ring, and families have since visited and communicated through an app and by using high school French and English.
The AP report said the exhibit runs in the Presidio through August before heading to 10 other cities, including Honolulu, Los Angeles and Portland, Oregon, and it is presented by the National Veterans Network, the National Museum of the United States Army and the Army Historical Foundation. It offers visitors a single display of artifacts and family memories that ties battlefield service to the government’s incarceration policies that overlapped with that service.