J-Sei is offering a series of activities that are designed to help us take a look at archives and legacy building from different angles, including family history, grassroots organizing, and education and research. We’ll explore our unique cultural and community history in the context of broader considerations such as: How is our Japanese American story part of a larger narrative? How has J-Sei evolved over the past 50 years? What can we do moving forward into the 21st century?  Join us for 1, 2, or 3 of the activities.

My Family Archives, An Exploratory Workshop (#3)
Sat, June 4, 1 to 3 pm

What do I do with my family archives –documents, photos and artifacts that provide a visual history? How do we digitally preserve these documents and piece together the story they tell? Bring a few items from your family archive to examine and share. Hear from oral historian/anthropologist Dana Shew on how to begin to document your family history. Piece together the clues in archived photos, artifacts and shared memories that contribute to the history of your family.

Dana Ogo Shew serves as a Staff Archaeologist, Oral Historian, and Interpretive Specialist at the Anthropological Studies Center at Sonoma State University. She earned her M.A. in archaeology from the University of Denverwhere she examined the lives of women at Amache. For the last decade she has specialized in projects that research, preserve, and share stories about the Japanese American experience, especially those related to WWII Japanese American incarceration.

Watch the short documentary An Uninterrupted View of the Sea by Mika Yatsuhashi. Using old photographs, Super 8mm film and FBI documents, Yatsuhashi tells the story of her family’s struggle to prove their American identities during World War II. Standing in flux between the identity of “Alien” and “Citizen,” Mika Yatsuhashi explores the effect of her family’s Japanese immigrant history on her American identity today.

Mika Yatsuhashi is a filmmaker who grew up in Takoma Park, Maryland. She moved to Montreal in 2017 to attend the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema at Concordia University. In 2021, she graduated with a BFA in film production. In 2020, she won the Mel Hoppenheim Award for Outstanding Achievement. She has a passion for exploring documentary film, identity, and American history.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Family Archives” in the subject line.  Let us know if you plan to join us in-person or online.

 J-Sei History Day, A Community Archive (#1)
Saturday, April 30, 1 to 4 pm

As J-Sei celebrates its 50 years, we would like to invite you to help us recount some of our organization’s history. A group of volunteers have dedicated their time to help us digitize a large collection of photos, slides and video. We have quite a collection of photo archives from the early years, from 1971-1980, that we would like to share. We are also seeking photo archives through the middle years as an organization. Please let us know If you have photos or archives in your collection you can share with us.

Join us to reminisce and share memories of building community services over the past 50 years – from East Bay Japanese for Action (EBJA) to Japanese American Services of the East Bay (JASEB) to J-Sei. We need your help in mapping out our growth as a community organization. Bring your photos and memories, help us identify people and activities, and share reflections of what transpired. What was the focus and who was involved?

Help us to begin to envision the future. Where have we come from, where are we at, what does the future hold as we celebrate this momentous occasion of half a century? RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “J-Sei History” in the subject line.

Uprooted: The Incarceration of Japanese Americans (#2)
Th, May 5, 1 pm – Group Tour

Join us for a group tour to see the current exhibit at the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley. The year 2022 marks the 80th anniversary of a grave injustice in American society: the issuance of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorizing the forced removal of Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and into incarceration
camps inland for the duration of World War II.

Uprooted tells some of the stories of that traumatic time. It is structured as an interplay between official government directives–executive orders, mandatory forms, official photographs–and the response of Japanese Americans through their drawings, diaries, letters, scrapbooks, and reminiscences.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Uprooted” in the subject line and indicate the number of guests. Let us know if you would like to carpool.