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

Courage and Compassion: Shared Stories of New Mexico’s Japanese American WWII Experience will be held in the Miller Library. 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.