Inspire and Educate: Japanese American World War Two Veterans oral histories inspiring and educating the public - by Summer Espinoza

Inspire and Educate: Japanese American World War Two Veterans oral histories inspiring and educating the public 

Summer Espinoza, Digital Collections Manager, Go For Broke National Education Center

Go For Broke is an informal phrase meaning, “risk everything” or “go all in.” During World War II, Japanese American servicemen adopted this motto while serving their country, even after President Roosevelt enacted Executive Order 9066, ordering over 100,000 Japanese Americans living on the west coast into incarceration camps, and Japanese American men were initially classified as 4-C enemy aliens.  

In the spring of 2015 Go For Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC) was awarded funds by the Council on Library and Information Resources under the Hidden Collections initiative.  Go For Broke National Education Center and several other Japanese American cultural heritage organizations are working to create the National Digital Archives of Japanese American Military Service. In the digital archives will be representative surrogates of 1,300 oral histories and 1,500 still image and textual materials. Approximately 800 of the catalog records will include the ability to stream the oral history and 230 will include a full transcription surrogate.  A select number, approximately 150 to 200 oral histories, will be indexed using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) developed by the University of Kentucky’s Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History.  As the name suggests, OHMS connects users to content from a search result to the corresponding moment in an interview.  This descriptive methodology empowers users to search both across and within oral history content, usually hidden. 

Go For Broke National Education Center was founded in 1986 as a veteran organization to honor and educate the public about the Japanese American World War Two military narrative.  In 1998 the organization began the Hanashi Oral History Project-- Hanashi meaning “to speak” in Japanese.  Since 1998, the organization has recorded just under 1,200 oral histories from across the nation and in Japan.  The collection also contains oral histories of the Women’s Army Corps, the Navajo Code Talkers, the African American Tuskegee Airmen and soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.   In May 2016 we opened our first public space, the Defining Courage Experience, an interpretive and interactive exhibition.  This exhibition explores the concept of courage through the lives of the Japanese American World War Two veterans and asks modern visitors to act with similar courage in their own lives.  This interactive exhibition includes both text and audio visual materials from the GFBNEC Hanashi Oral History Project.