JANM Announces Programs for AANHPI Month

Editors please note: JANM’s Pavilion is closed for renovation; programs will continue on the JANM campus and at other locations at janm.org/OnTheGo. 

LOS ANGELES, CA – The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) announces its roster of programs for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Month throughout May 2025. Tickets are available at janm.org/events. 

Celebrate Discover Nikkei’s twentieth anniversary with Nikkei Chronicles #14, Nikkei Family 2: Remembering Roots, Leaving Legacies. Everyone is encouraged to submit their stories, essays, memoirs, and vignettes about how your family has influenced you, what you hope to pass on to future generations, and what Nikkei family means to you. Cherished memories, best-kept secrets, stories of struggle to legacies of strength, and more are welcome. Submissions will be accepted from May 1–September 30, 2025 at 6 p.m. PDT. More information will be available on discovernikkei.org.

From May 3–7, 2025, films will be screened at JANM’s Democracy Center as part of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF). The entire festival, which runs from May 1–7, 2025, is the premier showcase for the best and brightest of Asian Pacific cinema.

On May 3, 2025, JANM will celebrate the Los Angeles premiere of Third Act as part of LAAPFF. The film, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival, will be screened at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s Aratani Theatre from 6 p.m.–8 p.m. Tickets are $20 and available at laapff2025.eventive.org/schedule. On May 4, 2025, JANM will present a community screening of Third Act at the Tateuchi Democracy Forum from 6 p.m.–8 p.m. Directed by Tadashi Nakamura, the director of JANM’s Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center, the critically acclaimed film explores the father-son relationship between Tadashi and Robert A. Nakamura,  “the godfather of Asian American media.” When Robert is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, they embark on a journey of art, activism, grief, and fatherhood.

On May 10, 2025, JANM will present the free public program, Temporary Detention: A New Multimedia Project About “Assembly Centers,” from 2 p.m.–3:30 p.m. The panel explores a new online project that takes 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. Moderator Brian Niiya, the content director at Densho, will be joined by 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 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.

The Museum’s JANM on the Go booth will be offering activities at the Japanese American Cultural & Community Center’s free Kodomo no Hi (Children’s Day) Celebration on May 3, 2025, and the Los Angeles Public Library’s free family festival, AAPI Joy: Narratives, Storytelling, and History, on May 17, 2025.

JANM has also partnered with The Irei Project and USC’s Duncan Ryuken Williams to travel The Ireichō: Book of Names in conjunction with pilgrimages to all ten former War Relocation Authority concentration camps, to other Department of Justice and Wartime Civil Control Administration incarceration sites, and selected cities across the US. During AANHPI Month, the Ireichō will be stopping at Amache and Denver, Colorado, from May 13–17, 2025, and Jerome and Rohwer, Arkansas, from May 21–22, 2025. The national tour is part of JANM on the Go, and a full list of venues is available at janm.org/ireicho.

JANM’s exhibition, Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo, is currently on view at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, through August 17, 2025. The exhibition is also part of JANM on the Go and it will continue its national tour with stops at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Monterey Museum of Art before making its final stop at JANM in late 2026.

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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 center for civil rights, ensuring that the hard-fought lessons of the World War II incarceration are not forgotten. A Smithsonian Affiliate and one of America’s Cultural Treasures, JANM is a hybrid institution that straddles traditional museum categories. JANM is a center for the arts as well as history. It provides a voice for Japanese Americans and a forum that enables all people to explore their own heritage and culture. Since opening to the public in 1992, JANM has presented over one hundred exhibitions onsite while traveling forty 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’s Pavilion is closed for renovation; programs will continue on the JANM campus, throughout Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Southern California, and beyond from early January 2025 through late 2026. For more information, visit janm.org/OnTheGo or follow us on social media @jamuseum.