Commemorate Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with the launch of the new multimedia project, Temporary Detention: A Guide to the Forced “Assembly Centers.” The website provides a past-and-present look at the fifteen temporary detention centers and the Owens Valley “Reception Center” operated by the US Army’s Western Civil Control Administration during World War II. Euphemistically called “Assembly Centers” these hastily-built detention centers imprisoned approximately 92,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry as the ten concentration camps were being built.

Learn more about these often unknown centers with website content creators Sharon Yamato and Stan Honda; Santa Anita temporary detention center survivor June Aochi Berk; Pomona temporary detention center survivor Bacon Sakatani; and archaeologist Koji Lau-Ozawa. Lau-Ozawa will also highlight the current memorial project at the former Tulare temporary detention center. The program will also feature a preview of a new documentary by filmmaker Evan Kodani featuring June Aochi Berk at the Santa Anita Racetrack horse stall where she and her family were held. Brian Niiya, the content director at Densho, will moderate the program.