For this assignment, I visited the Japanese American National Museum. This museum is located in the city of Los Angeles in Little Tokyo. The museum underwent and expansion in 1996 which allowed them to move out of the old building next door. Their past exhibits focused on Japanese American gardeners in Southern California, Japanese American artists, and Angel Island.
             Currently, the museum has two temporary exhibits. One of them showcases the Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles. On display were photographs, street signs, artwork, and artifacts from the area. Images and various histories of many different ethnic groups were on display. There were yearbooks, pictures, and letterman jackets from Roosevelt High School from the 1940's. Also on display was a stained glass window from a Jewish retirement home. Piñatas and murals were on display as well. I got a chance to speak to a volunteer at the museum who also was a resident of Boyle Heights. He is a Japanese American man and he told me stories about how many ethnicities have considered Boyle Heights home. Russian, Jewish, Mexican, and Japanese cultures overlapped in this area. This exhibit showed how many different ethnic groups called Boyle Heights home.
             Another exhibit in the museum was called "Common Ground: The Heart of Community." This is an ongoing exhibit. It gave viewers and overview of 130 years of Japanese American history. There were many objects on display from the Issei generation, to World War II, leading up to the present. There were boxes used for storing raisins from Japanese American farms, wedding attire, tools used in pharmacology, desks from Japanese schools, and a barracks from Heart Mountain. There was a separate section for World War II. On display in that section were anti-Japanese articles and signs. There were pictures from the camps. Medals from the 442nd were on display as well. I got a chance to speak briefly...