Courage and Compassion: Shared Stories of New Mexico’s Japanese American WWII Experience

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Army Staff Sgt. James S. Kawashime, with B Company, 100th Battalion, 442nd Regimental Combat Team, stands guard at a bivouac site in France in October 1944. Made up almost entirely of Nisei, or second generation Japanese-Americans, the origins of the 100th Bn., 442nd RCT began with the Hawaii Army National Guard. The unit faced fierce fighting in Italy and France and by war’s end stood among the Army's most decorated units for combat actions and acts of valor. 

© Western New Mexico University

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Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/05/2020
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
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Courage and Compassion: Shared Stories of New Mexico’s Japanese American WWII Experience will be held in the Miller Library. The performance is free and open to the public.

The WNMU History Program in the Department of Social Sciences and Cultural Sciences and J. Cloyd Miller Library present COURAGE AND COMPASSION: Shared Stories of New Mexico’s Japanese American WWII Experience, by the New Mexico Japanese American Citizens League. The free event is in Miller Library on Thursday, March 5, from 6 to 8 p.m.

During WWII, 120,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry were removed from the West Coast and placed into barbed wired camps in desolate areas of the United States. In New Mexico, about 5,000 Japanese immigrant men were held in Lordsburg, Santa Fe, Fort Stanton, and Old Raton Ranch.
COURAGE AND COMPASSION combines music, slide photography. and readers theater to dramatize the experience of New Mexico’s Japanese Americans during WWII.

Playwright/director Nikki Louis was incarcerated as a child in a camp in the Idaho desert, while her father was held in Lordsburg and Santa Fe prison camps from 1942 to 1946.

JACL Players, Albuquerque’s Asian American performance group, dramatize stories of hardship and strife but also of bravery and generosity. Many New Mexicans rose above racial hatred and war hysteria to recognize Japanese Americans as friends, neighbors, and citizens. JACL Players share these stories to remind us of the extraordinary acts of ordinary people in challenging times.

This program is brought to WNMU through the generous funding of the New Mexico Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Event contacts are WNMU Associate Professor of History Dr. Scott Fritz at Scott.Fritz@wnmu.edu and JACL Players Artistic Director Nikki Nojima Louis at louisnikki9@gmail.com.

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