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INSTRUCTIONS: How to post to the Dedication Wall

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INSTRUCTIONS: How to post to the Dedication Wall

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TO POST: In the top right corner, click 'Log In' to create an account. Then click on the '+' sign at the bottom right side of this page or double click anywhere on the wall and a new note will appear.

WHAT TO POST:
- Your name
- Your connection to Densho
- A special memory about Densho
- A way that Densho has benefitted you, your family, or your community.
- You can also upload a photo or video.

TO EDIT: Hover over the top right side of post and click the pencil icon to edit or garbage icon to delete.

QUESTIONS: If you are having problems, please email Kristi Nakata at kristi.nakata@densho.org and I will help you to problem solve.

Return to Densho's Gala website: https://densho.org/25gala/

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My parents’ story is similar to so many Japanese Americans. The challenges and injustice they endured was met with strength and perseverance and a deep commitment to family and community. I am ever grateful for their love and guidance. The work of Densho and other organizations in documenting their legacy is invaluable.

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Nikkei Garden in front of the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre, Burnaby BC Canada www.centre.nikkeiplace.org

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Congrats Densho on the occasion of your gala

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Congrats Densho on the occasion of your gala

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As a Canadian institution with similar goals to preserve, honour, and share complex Nikkei history and heritage, Densho has always been inspirational to us. Congrats on your gala evening.

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With love and appreciation for Densho. Karen Maeda Allman and Elizabeth Wales

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With love and appreciation for Densho. Karen Maeda Allman and Elizabeth Wales

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Heart Mountain

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In memory of my parents, Masaji and Kikuko Ito 

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In memory of my parents, Masaji and Kikuko Ito 

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I miss them every day.

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Every time I access DENSHO, I am reminded of my dad telling me to "pay-it-forward!" A picture of my dad during the Occupation of Japan, October 1945 - October 1946, Fukui Military Government Team.

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Polly Shigaki's parents Mitsuko (Murakami) and Seigo Otani, who were matched and married at Minidoka concentration camp

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Densho is a vital resource for telling our cherished Nikkei stories!

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Densho is a vital resource for telling our cherished Nikkei stories!

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Our family is so grateful to Densho for carrying our stories and drawing important connections to injustices throughout American history — up to present day.

Densho has been fundamental in supporting Erin’s public art and activism work. She was part of their inaugural artist in residency class through which she was able to create her first wheat paste mural and was able to do vital research on other projects through Densho’s scholarship and archives.

We feel so enriched and fortunate that this community has continued to build a wide-ranging portal for our stories, healing, and social justice work!

The Shigaki Family

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My daddy in ~1938, Joseph Ishikawa (Santa Anita, Amache)

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頑張って続けてください!

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頑張って続けてください!

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Densho is an amazing treasure trove of Japanese American history, thanks to Tom Ikeda's tireless work. As a daughter, I greatly appreciate your archiving my father's legacy through oral histories and digital archives. As a sister, I am so proud that my little brother could create the art for two of the stories in We Hereby Refuse with incredible historical accuracy thanks to your digital repository. And as a retired teacher, I am grateful that I had that amazing resource to share with my students.  Here's to another 25 and beyond -- Happy Anniversary, Densho!

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I have known and worked with Densho staff and resources for close to 10 years now, and I am so grateful for them every day. I use the encyclopedia and digital archives frequently for my work in public history, including work with the Washington State Historical Society, the Washington Trust for Historic Preservation, the Tanforan Memorial exhibit (forthcoming), and HistoryLink.org. We also relied heavily on Densho’s collections to write We Hereby Refuse, a graphic novel about Japanese American resistance to wartime incarceration, published in 2021. I am grateful that interviews with my family members (including my uncle Hiroshi Kashiwagi) and photo archives (including my auntie Hisa Nimura Horiuchi) are well-preserved and curated with Densho. Thank you Densho—here’s to another 25 years and more!

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Thank you Seijiro, Yuki, Ruth, Jane, Archie and Hideaki.

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This book cover relied on an image found only at the Densho Digital Archive.

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My first encounter with Densho came when Tom Ikeda interviewed my father, Joseph Ishikawa, about his early life. The recording is now a cherished part of my family's story.
Years later, I relied heavily on Densho's Digital Archive to source visual references for a graphic novel I helped to illustrate. The cover itself could not have been drawn without Densho's help.
Densho's vision and dedication have created a priceless resource for this city and the world. Here's to the next 25 years!

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Tom and team -- Grateful for your 25 years of leadership to tell stories of the incarceration of Japanese Americans, including the Sakura family from Seattle!

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Thanks from the NWS Humanities Department

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Thanks from the NWS Humanities Department

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The faculty of the Northwest School's Humanities Department would like to thank Tom Ikeda and the tireless, dedicated staff of archivists that have made the Densho Archive possible. As educators, we have benefitted greatly from the work of Densho over the last few decades. The stories gathered in the archive have helped us to educate our students about the history of their region. It has helped to expose them to diverse perspectives on ethnicity, nation, and community and to challenge them with complex questions about citizenship, culture, and representation. And it has given them a model of meaningful public scholarship and a foundation from which to construct their own historical narratives. We are endlessly grateful for the incredible materials and thoughtful resources that have been collected here, and for the opportunities we have had to work with Tom and other members of the Densho team. We look forward to another 25 years of collaboration and learning!

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In memory of my grandmother, Ura Sawada, picture bride;
In memory of my grandfather, Ira Sawada, immigrant railroad and farm worker;
In memory of my mother, Noriko Sawada Bridges Flynn, who taught me Gaiman is not an option;
May your contributions to this country never be forgotten.
Kathy Bridges

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I'm so glad there is a resource that I can show my children about JA culture. Thank you for keeping our history alive.
In memory of my grandfather Harry Nakatani, survivor of Gila River.

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Preserving witness history is vital to keeping up a reservoir of truthful history, for generations to come can understand events and family in a first hand form.
Thank you for your foresight, ingenuity, and passion.

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Thank you, Densho, for your persistence, care, and diligence in sharing our JA stories. And cheers to our fearless Nisei!

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It is important to honor the legacy of challenge and accomplishment of our Japanese ancestors.  Their stories must not be forgotten, and must be preserved for future generations.  Densho makes that possible.  Thank you, Densho.

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My father with me on his knee in Tule Lake.

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I began, in the late 1970s, to do research for a novel set in Tule Lake Camp where I was born to Caucasian parents who had gone to work there in March of 1942. I had to search far and wide to track down information on the camps and on my parents’ work and life in Tule Lake.  After the 1999 publication of the novel, I happened upon a review of it by Brian Niiya on Densho.org, then a fairly new resource, whose ambitious goal was to consolidate the history of the Japanese American Incarceration in one place. What a thrill it was to realize that further questions about where I was born could now be at my fingertips! When years later I was working on a book about my friend the performer, Mary Mon Toy AKA Mary Teruko Watanabe Okada, I contacted Brian Niiya and soon realized what an extraordinary resource he was.  I still remember the day, when we had been working together on a short biography of Mary Mon Toy’s life for the encyclopedia, that an email popped up from him with the question, “Could this be your subject, Mary Okada?” He’d attached a contemporaneous newspaper article about Nisei women with secretarial skills who were in demand for jobs in New York City. The lead was a photo of Mary looking proper and beautiful, sitting with perfect posture at a typewriter. I never would have found that wonderful item without his help. The image confirmed that she had held a secretarial position to support herself after camp while she was studying voice at the Juilliard School.   It may seem an insignificant event to others, but to researchers it’s those concrete discoveries (one of many from Brian) that make the story come alive and lead to other information.  I continue to be indebted to Densho and to Brian Niiya as I now work with Caitlin Oiye Coon on building a visual archive of Mary Mon Toy, bringing the full story of her theatrical achievements as a Nisei performer to the fore on the site for future researchers. This public recognition of Mary Mon Toy would never have been possible without Densho.org.

https://encyclopedia.densho.org/Mary_Mon_Toy/

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My father, Don Elberson, with me on his Knee. My mother Ruth Elberson in the white shirt dress.

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The Importance of Densho to Students and Teachers

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The Importance of Densho to Students and Teachers

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I have been teaching Humanities at the Northwest School for 20 years and for almost every one of those years, Northwest School students have had the privilege of learning from Tom Ikeda, of traveling with him into the archive which Densho has preserved.

It is hard to pinpoint which aspect of these presentations is most impressive.

Each testimony is precisely framed.

The historical importance of each interview emerges so clearly—and grows—in a way that is cumulative throughout the presentation.

Students immediately see the importance of this history—what it teaches us about civil rights, human rights, justice and law.

The on-line archive is also an invaluable resource for students--not only to delve into and explore on their own, but also as a model of dynamic scholarship.

With deep gratitude for all that Densho means to students and their teachers,
Sarah Porter
Northwest School

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My name is Kiku Hughes, and my grandmother and great grandparents were incarcerated at Topaz. I was first introduced to Densho's work in 2016 when Brian Niiya moderated "Lessons from World War II: Enduring Legacies of Japanese American Incarceration" at the Seattle Central Library. I attended with my mom as the presidential election loomed, and parallels between Trump's campaigning and the rhetoric surrounding JA incarceration were constantly being made. The conversation at that event, and Densho's continued work, inspired me at that scary time to get more involved in the Seattle Nikkei community's efforts to push back against racist and xenophobic policies. Through researching the past and fighting for the present and future, Densho has made me feel more connected to my community and more invested in fighting for a better future. Thank you for all you do!

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25 years ago I first started volunteering at Densho as an intern the summer before entering law school. I wanted to volunteer because as a Yonsei Seattle native, I was deep into learning about my father’s and grandparents' experience incarcerated. I spent years during college traveling to universities, libraries, bookstores, and individual homes piecing together information and conducting my own oral history interviews for my college thesis. At the that time, there was no online, publicly accessible database that contained Japanese American history. That summer, I spent the summer cold calling and writing to Nisei who didn’t know me, but may have known my father and grandparents, who were also incarcerated. The incarceration experience was buried and generally not talked about. I was grateful to make connections, be invited into their homes, talk about deeply personal experiences, and explain Densho’s innovative digital archival technology that preserves their stories for future generations. Those initial meetings were powerful and there seemed to be a revived understanding that these stories needed be shared for future generations. Inspired to learn and retrace the roots of my ancestors, Densho was ahead of the curve and wanted to capture these stories digitally before they were lost forever and use technology that everyone could access and see. Densho helps inscribe the history of racism in American history generally and reclaim the loyalty and contribution of our ancestors to the American past and present. Now, as a proud Board member of Densho, I want to help keep their stories alive and Densho does that. Thank you DENSHO!

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I first heard of Densho as a 12 year old when my grandmother was interviewed as a part of their digital collection. Up until that point, she had always been hesitant to share her stories of incarceration but Densho provided her with an outlet to share her experience. Since then, she's continued to grow more comfortable when discussing camp and has been able to share more with her family and friends that she hadn't been able to previously. Densho has my eternal gratitude for giving her this opportunity. I wanted to give back to the organization in any way that I could, and started interning over the summer following my freshman year of high school. I began to understand more about what made the people and the purpose of this organization so special, and was honored when I was asked to speak at their 2019 Annual Dinner. It was there that I realized the widespread impacts that Densho has had on the Japanese American community in Seattle and beyond. I am incredibly grateful to be involved with this organization and I am excited to see what the next few years have in store!