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A New Exhibit Highlights the Dilemmas of Japanese American Soldiers in WWII

Rae Alexandra
‘I Am An American: The Nisei Soldier Experience’ is on view now at the MIS Historic Learning Center.
A black and white image of a 1940s-era store, with white car parked outside. A large sign reading 'I am an American' hangs on the store front.
‘I Am An American’ by Dorothea Lange, which captured the Wanto Grocery Store in Oakland, one of thousands of businesses forced to close because of World War II-era forced incarceration. (National Archives)

Imagine having your entire family uprooted and imprisoned in the desert in remote, squalid concentration camps. Imagine losing your home, your business, your friends and your pets. Imagine this is all because of your family’s heritage. Then imagine those imprisoning you presenting a “loyalty questionnaire” to determine whether you are worthy to fight in a war for them.

All of these things happened to Japanese Americans during World War II, as many know. Now, a new exhibit at San Francisco’s Presidio captures the horror of it all, in depth.

I Am An American: The Nisei Soldier Experience charts the journeys of the 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry — two thirds of whom were American citizens — as these monumentally unjust series of events unfolded. (“Nisei” means the first generation of children born to Japanese immigrants in America.) The exhibition pays particular attention to the brave young men and women who chose to fight in the U.S. armed forces during WWII, even while their families languished behind barbed wire.

“We were fighting two wars,” Capt. Sakae Takahashi of the 100th Infantry Battalion said, looking back. “One for American democracy, and one against the prejudice towards us in America.”

A 1940s-era Japanese G.I. Joe, complete with rifle, helmet and tool belt, inside a display case.
A limited edition G.I. Joe from 1998, produced in the likeness of a Japanese American infantry man with the 442nd RCT. It was produced to honor the service of the Nisei soldiers. (Rae Alexandra)

As I Am An American makes clear, the decision to fight in the second world war was not easy for the Japanese Americans. After the loyalty questionnaires were first distributed in Feb. 1943, chaos erupted in the camps as prisoners aged 17 and up were asked to put their lives on the line for a government that had rejected them. Some protested, demanding freedom for their families before they would enlist. Those demands fell on deaf ears.

Still, some answered the call. In the exhibit, one large image of military liguist Hitoshi Kanzaki visiting his parents (Asano and Kenichiro) at Idaho’s Minidoka camp is devastating. While Kanzaki and his three brothers served in the American military, his aging parents remained imprisoned. Kanzaki was ultimately killed in action in Italy in August of 1944.

Intimate diaries and letters are on view in the exhibit, offering a glimpse into the mindset of the Japanese American soldiers as they served overseas. One 1944 letter written by private first class Sadao Munemori to his sister, who remained in the Manzanar camp, states: “I think I did right by enlisting because my home is here in the U.S.”

An oil painter named Henry Y. Sugimoto, who studied at UC Berkeley and the California School of Arts and Crafts, is also highlighted. In 1942, he and his family were forcibly relocated to a concentration camp in Arkansas. Sugimoto stayed behind, producing around 100 pieces of art during his three years of incarceration, while his brother served with the 442nd regimental combat team.

Three sepia toned portraits of Japanese American servicemen from World War II.
Among the Japanese American military personnel highlighted in ‘I Am An American’ are (L-R) Hiroshi Mayeda, Toshiaki Kuge and Susumu Satow. (Rae Alexandra)

Also featured in I Am An American is Iris A. Watanabe, who was born in Santa Cruz. After she and her family were forced into the Amache concentration camp in Colorado, she became the first Nisei woman from Amache to enlist in the Women’s Army Corps. She later attended the Military Intelligence Service Language School.

“We just wanted this chance to prove that we were loyal Americans,” second Lt. Grant Ichikawa, Military Intelligence Service, is quoted as saying.

I Am An American does a dynamic job of taking the viewer into the lives of the Japanese Americans caught in limbo after President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 in Feb. 19, 1942. While reverent in regards the service and sacrifices of the Nisei soldiers, the traveling exhibit does not tread lightly when it comes to the unjust treatment of Japanese Americans during the era.

One of the final exhibits in the collection notes that:

The government’s rationale for Japanese American exclusion and incarceration was grounded in the Final Report of Lt. General John L. DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command. DeWitt relied on false rumors of Japanese American espionage and sabotage to justify the exclusion … Although the [ONI, MID, FBI and FCC] were aware that the final report contained false information … the court was left unadvised, constituting a fraud upon the Supreme Court.

Taken in its entirety, I Am An American is a moving, fascinating and infuriating exhibition that, in an era of aggressive expansion for ICE detention centers, is also pertinent and timely. The individual stories highlighted, alongside the soldiers’ personal belongings, medals and uniforms, make these long-lost soldiers’ experiences personal and present for each and every viewer.

That the United States did this to so many of its own is no longer surprising. But I Am An American will reignite an appropriate amount of fury that it ever happened at all — and that similar injustices continue today.

‘I Am An American: The Nisei Soldier Experience’ is on display now through Aug. 31, 2026, at the Military Intelligence Historic Learning Center (640 Old Mason St., San Francisco), Fridays–Tuesdays, noon-5 p.m.

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