JANM Presents Pop-Up Exhibition at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts on June 7, 2023

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) will bring three innovative exhibitions to the Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa as part of a one-day pop-up exhibition in connection with that evening’s performance of Defining Courage on Wednesday, June 7, 2023. The pop-up exhibition will be free and open to the public from 11 a.m.– 4 p.m.

The pop-up will include:

The Interactive StoryFile of Lawson Iichiro Sakai, in which visitors converse with World War II combat veteran Lawson Iichiro Sakai (1924–2020) through AI technology. Sakai, who served in the US Army’s decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team, received four Purple Heart medals and a Bronze Star. Sakai’s oral history was preserved using StoryFile technology, and he answered more than 1,000 questions over five days of filming with twenty-seven different cameras.

A Life in Pieces: The Diary and Letters of Stanley Hayami, an interactive, 360-degree video that brings to life the diary, artwork, and letters of a Los Angeles Japanese American teenager in the early 1940s whose family was imprisoned by the US government during World War II.

Contested Histories: Art and Artifacts from the Allen Hendershott Eaton Collection, a selection of arts and crafts handmade by Japanese Americans who were incarcerated in America’s concentration camps.

The pop-up exhibition is sponsored by The Picerne Family Foundation. 

Defining Courage is a unique live performance created by Emmy Award-winning filmmakers Jeff MacIntyre and ABC7-Los Angeles News Anchor David Ono that combines live storytelling, new and historic film footage, live music, a choir, and eyewitness interviews to tell the story of the Nisei soldiers of World War II. JANM is proud to partner with Story Boldly to tour Defining Courage. The June 7 performance of Defining Courage is co-presented by ABC7, Disney, JANM, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, Outside In Theatre, and Story Boldly. More information and updates can be found at DefiningCourageShow.com.

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About the Japanese American National Museum (JANM)

Established in 1985, JANM promotes understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience. Located in the historic Little Tokyo district of downtown Los Angeles, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories and strives to provide a voice for Japanese Americans as well as a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over 70 exhibitions onsite while traveling 17 exhibits to venues such as the Smithsonian Institution and the Ellis Island Museum in the United States, and to several leading cultural museums in Japan and South America. JANM is open on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday–Sunday from 11 a.m.–5 p.m. and on Thursday from 12 p.m.–8 p.m. JANM is free every third Thursday of the month. On all other Thursdays, JANM is free from 5 p.m.–8 p.m. For more information, visit janm.org or follow us on social media @jamuseum.