Grand Opening for Righting a Wrong and Minnesota's Secret Language School

Kids can learn basic origami at 1 and 3 p.m. Thursday and Friday, October 17 and 18, in the Museum’s galleries. There also will be a special storytime at 11 a.m. in the Children’s Room on Thursday and a Kid’s Language School program at 11 a.m. on Friday.

Hannah Semba will give a first-hand account of her time at the Tule Lake, California, internment camp at 1 p.m. Saturday, October 19. She was 16 at the time of her incarceration. Semba spent two years in Tule Lake, at which time she applied and was accepted to Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. When the fighting was over, she was allowed to transfer to the University of Minnesota, which had not accepted Japanese-Americans during the war. Semba’s family then joined her and her sister in the Twin Cities once they were released from Tule Lake. Semba still lives in the Twin Cities area, and is an active member of the Japanese American Citizens League, Twin Cities Chapter, which created the Minnesota’s Secret Language School exhibit.

Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans & World War II is on display through Jan 5, 2020, and Minnesota’s Secret Language School will run through March 2020. Both exhibits examine the impact of World War II on the lives and rights of Japanese-American citizens and promote conversations about how we as Americans treat those that are viewed as “different.”