Lasting Marks

LEFT: After World War II, Roy Nakayama (nicknamed “Dr. Chile”) earned his Ph.D in plant pathology. He was professor and researcher in agriculture and horticulture at New Mexico State University for 32 years and introduced two new varieties of chiles, the NuMex Big Jim and the NuMex R Naky.

Albuquerque’s Japanese American community legacy

ON VIEW: JUNE 1–NOVEMBER 3, 2019 Courage and Compassion: Our Shared Story of the Japanese American World War II Experience

THE INCARCERATION OF MORE THAN 100,000 JAPANESE AMERICANS (many of them U.S. citizens) during World War II left an indelible mark on the nation and on New Mexico. Prison camps run by the U.S. War Relocation Authority isolated tens of thousands of men, women, and children in difficult conditions. New Mexico had four such confinement camps.

The upcoming exhibition, Courage and Compassion: Our Shared Story of the Japanese American World War II Experience, chronicles the attack on Pearl Harbor through the incarceration of Japanese Americans, and the postwar fight for redress. Courage and Compassion has travelled nationally while highlighting local stories at each location. Albuquerque is the tenth stop. Organized by Go for Broke National Education Center (GFBNEC) with funding in part by a grant from the National Park Service, Courage and Compassion runs from June 1 through November 3 in the William A. + Loretta Barrett Keleher Community History Gallery.

The community-curated part of the exhibition focuses on the formation and development of the Albuquerque Nisei Club, from its inception in 1947 as a social club to its current iteration as the New Mexico chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), a cultural and civil rights organization. Through photographs, artifacts and personal belongings from camp prisoners, visitors will learn how Japanese families in Albuquerque and surrounding communities weathered the storm of war, and about the heroism of those white, Native American, and Latino individuals who stood by their Japanese friends and neighbors when it wasn’t always popular to do so.

Community curator Nikki Nojima Louis, a playwright and head of JACL’s theater