March 6 Occidental College Special Collections and College Archives will be hosting the work of history major Thea Wilson (senior) who has been archiving, rehousing and reprocessing the college’s Japanese American Relocation Collection since October 2022. According to Wilson, the last major project on this collection took place in 2006. This latest exhibition, entitled Hidden Histories: Oxy and Japanese American Incarceration brings a well-needed revamp, thanks to a large donation from the Grace Nixon Foundation.
Issued by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, Executive Order 9066 authorized the forced removal of “all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to ‘relocation centers’ further inland” essentially resulting in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were born and raised U.S. citizens. With over 3,000 documents housed, this collection recalls the local and national history of the Executive Order. Wilson said her work has served to preserve these documents for future learning.
“I think that the main goal is being able to preserve this collection for a really long time so that future people can continue using it for research and that it can become a more accessible collection,” said Wilson. “Before I started working on this internship there was a lot of material that wasn’t necessarily housed in the best practice ways; things folded like crazy; staples and staples and staples.”
According to Wilson, this collection is vital as it highlights the personal stories of a group often overlooked not only by history, but by their own Occidental community, as many Japanese students were unable to complete their studies due to the incarceration. Wilson said that this was an injustice.
“Something I think is really interesting is that outside of Choi Auditorium, there’s this plaque in commemoration to Oxy students that died in World War II,” said Wilson. “I feel like we should also have a plaque for students that were incarcerated, that weren’t allowed to continue their education at Oxy while their white peers could just continue going. I want people to understand that this is a key moment in Oxy history.”
Julie Tanaka, Head of Special Collections, has been overseeing Wilson’s work since she took over as head of the department in late 2022. Alongside associate professor of history Jane Hong, Tanaka secured Wilson the internship following a meeting the pair had at that year’s Involvement Fair and a remarkably well-suited application. According to Tanaka, Wilson’s work has been a welcome continuation of Special Collections’ long record of student internships.
“Oxy Special Collections has a pretty long record of sponsoring student internships,” said Tanaka. “We are fortunate in this one that it’s been so long and it appears right now that the funding will continue so we can continue this next year.”
Tanaka also said that Wilson’s taken quickly to the work.
“We’ve been working pretty closely to establish guidelines and a project line,” said Tanaka. “But because Wilson has been working on this now for close to two years she’s got it pretty much down.”
According to Hong, the project came about through a donation from The Grace Nixon Foundation, the efforts of alumnus Michael White ‘76 and a need for resources on Japanese American incarceration. She said that the collection has been a boon for the academic community, and has provided a much-needed look into the local history of Japanese American incarceration, so the project to revamp it was a natural next step.
“The Japanese American Relocation Project has been an amazing resource and historian colleagues of mine have come to use the collection here,” said Hong. “With the departure of Dale Steiber, who was the long-time Special Collections Librarian here at Oxy, I suspected there was a need [for this collection] and so the History Department was able to partner with Special Collections and The Grace Nixon Foundation. Thea has been our first intern and she’s done an amazing job.”
According to Tanaka, resources like this are vital for everyone: students, academics and the public. She said work like Wilson’s helps keep the collection alive for future generations to discover and learn from.
“We encourage students to come in here to just explore and be curious and our staff is happy to work with them and show them all kinds of different things,” said Tanaka. “These are unique materials to Oxy that can’t be found elsewhere. It’s experiential learning, unlike some other repositories out there where they really do want either advanced researchers or a well defined project.”
Wilson said she hopes this exhibition can shed light on the power of archives and primary source documents.
“They speak a lot to what was actually happening rather than an interpretation of it,” said Wilson. “I think that the archives are static materials that are put away, but when we can do things like exhibits […] we are giving life back into them: creating a new collective memory.”
Wilson’s exhibition will take place from noon-1pm on Wednesday March 6 in the Library Gallery, Mary Norton Clapp Library.
Contact Will White wwhite@oxy.edu.
