Life History Program Sharon Kumagai conducts an oral history interview with her father, Minoru Kumagai. Photo by Norman Sugimoto. The Japanese American National Museum recognizes the importance of oral history and is dedicated to working with the Japanese American community to document history through the techniques of oral history. The Museum's Life History Program was establis hed in early 1995, joining several other excellent programs in the quest to recover Japanese American history through oral history. The program was named the Life History Program to encompass oral and written material that h elps us to understand individual lives in the context of our broader American history.
Oral history is particularly important for the Japanese American community.
As a community of color, our history is often marginalized from the mainstream historical record. No longer is history told about them, but rather history is told by them. Moreover, the anti-Japanese hysteria of World War II forced many families to destroy irreplaceable photographs, letters, and other documentation. These historical records would have been very valuable to researchers today. Oral history offers one way in which some of this lost history can be recovered.