Local Resources: Japanese American National Museum

By Beverly Mateer Taylor

Japanese American National Museum
Hirasaki National Resource Center
369 East First St.
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Hours: Tuesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Telephone: (213) 830-5680
Web: http://www.janm.org
E-mail: hnrc@janm.org

The Hirasaki National Resource Center is located inside the beautiful new Japanese American National Museum. The center provides access to the museum’s collections, including art, artifacts and archival collections in a multitude of formats (primary materials) and to published resources (secondary materials).

A rapidly growing secondary research collection of over 3,000 works includes genealogical resources, government records and publications, microfilms, oral histories, periodicals, photographs, and more.

When I arrived at the center, research assistant Marie Masumoto greeted me at the reference desk. She was unfazed by my total lack of knowledge about Japanese-American family information sources. She took me through the process she uses with every new visitor seeking family information and handed me copies of several forms and instruction sheets they have prepared to help center users.

The sheets included computer instructions for accessing NARA records and interpreting their codes, lists of information found in immigration records, and blank forms to record information from camp and immigration records.

The first step is a reference “interview” and filling out a brief Family History Search Form, which enables the staff to most effectively provide assistance with internment camp, immigration, or veteran’s records. We began with the WRA (War Relocation Authority) and Department of Justice Internment Camp files, which list all World War II evacuees and can be searched by name. These records are online at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Website, but finding and interpreting them can be a challenge for the novice computer user.

Center personnel provide simple printed directions for accessing the records, which provide many family details. Forms are available to record the information and to order copies of case files from NARA. An online database of Japanese-American veterans is also available although it is not complete. The center is still actively seeking information about veterans to add to this database.

From camp and veterans records, we moved to Immigration Records, which are available on microfilm. Volunteers have gone through the films and prepared an alphabetical list of all Japanese names for passengers entering the country through Seattle, San Francisco, and San Pedro, and include some who came through Oregon. For those wishing to go back to Japanese records to do further research, these records are especially helpful, since they give the hometown of the immigrant. The records at the center do not usually include Japanese immigrants who came into the United States through Mexico, Canada, or Hawaii.

One must go to the National Archives for those who came through Mexico, or the Japanese-Canadian Museum near Vancouver for entrants from Canada. Hawaiian records prior to 1900 can be found at the Family History Library in Salt Lake; post-1900 records are only available in Hawaii.

The Resource Center also has a collection of how-to books on genealogy, as well as the history and culture of Japanese and Japanese Americans.

Chester Hashizume, who teaches genealogy classes at the center, has compiled a very useful booklet “Discovering Your Japanese American Family Tree,” which provides the necessary background to understand Japanese records and names. Another useful publication is “A Preliminary Guide to Records of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders at NARA’s Pacific Region” (San Francisco), compiled by Bill Greene and Bob Glass. The authors have compiled a one-page list of genealogical sources.

All visitors to the museum are welcome to use the resource center. There is a charge for admission to the museum. Copy services are available for a fee.

The Website provides more information about both the museum and the resource center. It also features several “online exhibits.”

© Beverly Mateer Taylor. Used with permission.