this picture shows chateau park -- that's what it was called. it was not called kearney park then. in february 1892. this is the first day of the groundbreaking of the park. mr. kearney is in the front there with the long duster jacket. right behind in the middle of the photo there is a building, and really it was the first manager's residents. kearney mansion was the second manager's residence. that was the first build. that building exists today. we call it these servants quarters and is the head quarters for the fresno historical society today. on the property, mr. kearney did have this wonderful general store that his employees could shop in, and they would give out little coins to the employees and they could actually use those in the general store and exchange them for goods. kind of kept everything within the business, obviously, but it

also helped the employees who did not have to go into town so much. i guess there was another store in town that would accept the tokens as well. but instead of using paper money, they would just use the tokens to purchase what they needed. also, found in the collections there is a postcard of the original chateau in france, and i'm sure he visited there and that's where he got the idea -- of having his own chateau here in fresno. unfortunately, the chateau did not get built. we at least have this house today to bring people in. this is how they would about agriculture, learned about mr. kearney. we are so lucky that the kearney mansion still exists today. ♪ >> the commanding general of the western defense command determined that all japanese within the coastal areas should move inland. notices were posted. all persons of japanese descent were required to register.

>> we have to put ourselves in their shoes in 1942 and not think through the lens of 2017. things were very different back then. we are trying to do is humanize the experience and explain to people the environment people were in so they can understand how people endured that period. we are at the special collection research center at california state university fresno. we are here to talk about the 75th anniversary of the executive order 9066 that president franklin roosevelt signed on february 19, 1942. after the bombing of pearl harbor in 1941, the president, franklin roosevelt, decided that japanese americans needed to be evacuated from all areas of the west coast because either they may not be loyal to the united

states or just seen as some kind of threat, so they rounded up all the japanese-americans, including children and elderly people, and sent them to these 10 camps. executive order 9066 authorized the removal of all japanese-americans from the west coast. people wondered, why didn't they say anything at the time? well, they did. you maybe just didn't know about it. one case went to the supreme court, but it was denied. he lost the case. it wasn't until the 1980's that the decision was overturned, not by the supreme court but by a federal court. fresno has always had a large japanese-american population because of the agriculture. that is what they are known for. and so, obviously when all the japanese-americans were evacuated, all the japanese-americans from this

area were sent to two camps, but one camp in particular. there were 10 camps in the nation. they were all out on the west coast area. there were no camps in california except for manzinar. the rest were in colorado, arizona, wyoming. but a lot of our japanese-americans were affected so this is why we have this collection and focus on it. we have had the japanese-american collection for a long time. it comes from different donors over the years. it comes in fits and starts. it is only more in recent years that we've gotten a lot more material, and there's been a lot more focus on it. we have been fortunate to meet up with a number of families, not just japanese-american families, but other families. for example, the man who ran the fresno assembly center, his family gave us a number of items that are important. so, in recent years, it's become a major focus of ours, although

we have always had material on this topic. i think remembering the 75th anniversary of executive order 9066 is important because we have to remember that two thirds of the people put in these camps were american citizens. and so, what was done to them has never really been talked about from their point of view. that is one of my goals of this exhibition, to talk about how they felt about it. because for decades, no one talked about it, especially from their perspective. so one of the main goals of this exhibition is to explain to people, what happened, how people felt themselves who were in those camps. in the collection, we have a number of photographs, some of them really well known, but they illustrate what the environment was like before the japanese-americans were sent to camp. and these are just examples of the racism and prejudice that was rampant at the time.

people didn't distinguish between japanese-americans and japanese nationals who we were at war with after pearl harbor was attacked, so we will show these to remind people the environment of the japanese-americans were in. these photographs illustrate what they had a few days to get rid of their property, their farms. everything had to go. they were only allowed to carry a certain amount. only what they could carry, is what they say. if you couldn't carry it, you couldn't bring it to camp. you have to keep in mind they didn't know how long they were going to be gone. they did not know where they were going. but they were given a few days to dispose of everything. these photographs show them packing up, and so you see a variety of duffel bags as well as suitcases. they were taken by either bus or

train, and as i understand, the government didn't want people to know that they were transporting japanese-americans. they had to be out of sight. they put the shades down on the train. they didn't want anyone to know this was happening. this is a shot of a family. you see they all have these tags on them. id tags. every family was issued an id number, and they were told to wear the tags when they were being transported so they could be identified. they didn't use their names. they just used their numbers, which is part of the shame and dehumanization of this whole experience for the japanese-americans. these maps show how the japanese-americans were evacuated. they are color-coded by where they were sent. so the first one talks about exclusionary.

it went all the way up to the washington state. organ was also included. this map shows where each of the assembly centers are. so depending on where you lived, you were sent to a different assembly center, and this explains where all the assembly centers were. there was one at pinedale, and there was one at the fresno fairgrounds. the assembly center was just a temporary location. people moved into stalls and there were accounts of how hot it was in the summer and note air-conditioning. it dawned on me that hitting the hay was an appropriate term because they had to stuff their mattresses with hay. we use the term internment known that officially the word internment is meant for prisoners of war and military prisoners. were not these people

blame for anything, they did not do anything wrong, and so they were not prisoners but they were incarcerated and had no choice. while families were in the camps, people may not know they did their own newspapers. this is the one from fresno. it is called the "fresno great mind." even though they were there six months, they took the time to create a newspaper for themselves. they wrote about happenings in the camp. i think they were trying to create a sense of normalcy. for themselves, as well as to share information. again, they did not know how long they were going to be there. this was a way to communicate with each other and create a sense of community while they were in the assembly centers and later in the camps. reference -- they wrote the vignette. they did this all themselves.

the camp residents of themselves wrote, produced, and printed this all themselves. you can see how they mimeographed it. it is not a real newspaper because they did not real printing presses, but they did the best they could. people may be surprised to see that they actually had yearbooks. this is like a real yearbook. 1944, theom 1943, only camp in california. but a real yearbook. they had high school classes, and these people graduated while they were in the camp, so this was their yearbook. i did want to point out that there were a lot of japanese-americans who enlisted in the war. while their parents were in the camps, some of them chose to sign up to join the war. they were made up of only japanese-americans in the 442nd infantry.

but when they came home on leave, they would come back to the camps and visit with their parents and other family members. one of the highlights of our exhibition is the go for broke national association will be doing an exhibition in this space to talk about the military aspects of world war ii and how the japanese-americans helped win that war. and it wasn't just them fighting. it was -- they also helped the military with intelligence, so there is a whole section called m.i.s., military intelligence service, and anyone that could speak japanese or read japanese was recruited to work for the government. we will move on to some of the items that will be in the exhibition that are borrowed, on loan to us. we are here looking at items that will be in the exhibition. these are items on loan to us,

and first one is a trunk from the morishita family. there's an army blanket that was issued to them in the camp, and as you see, this is their family id number. 40421. this is what they could carry. whatever they could put in this top layer and the bottom layer, this is what they were able to bring to camp. thisamily kindly gave us army blanket because a lot of the camps were very cold. since they did not know where they were going, a lot of them did not bring appropriate winter clothing, so they were issued army blankets or given old army coats. this is an example of one of those. this is another piece of luggage, a duffel bag, and this

is from the kumalo family. you see their number is 40896, and the family were from the san joaquin valley. what is interesting is they had to make their own duffel bag. as you can see, this company was a local company from fresno. we have a wood carving from the posting camp that is being lent to us. we don't know who made it. it's not signed, but it's quite beautiful. you see the guard tower and a lot of the intricate details. obviously, these people had a lot of time in camp. a lot of them did not have jobs. they were allowed to work later on off camp. some of them had jobs in the camp but the older people really had nothing to do. i think a lot of them took up arts and crafts.

did a lot of crass work. -- craftswork. this is a little sculpture, and i have the translation here. someone carved in japanese, it means stay high and go forward, which is an ethic that the japanese-americans have. it means, endure, make the best of things, and go on that is one of the elements of the exhibition we want people to understand. they went through these experiences, but over the generations, they have hopefully come to terms with it. many families have gone on to prosper and incorporate this history into their family histories. there is a lot of history i think people do not realize. it is certainly pertinent today. we talk about how certain groups are being targeted. they certainly know that japanese-americans have taken up the banner to fight against any

civil liberty violations. for example, with muslim americans, they don't want this to happen again to anybody. and i think that is why the history is important. i would like people to understand that this is something that is not that far along, far away. it happened 75 years ago, but in the span of history it is not that long ago. when people say, could it happen again, people have to it did happen not to long ago and it could happen again. that's one of the main reasons for doing this exhibition. this weekend where featuring the history of fresno, california. about fresno and other stops on our cities tour at www.c-span.org/citiestour. you're watching american history tv. all weekend, every weekend on c-span3.