Yanai Initiative-produced exhibition on Japanese American incarceration gets new showing
‘BeHere / 1942,’ first exhibited in LA in 2022, is now on display at the Oakland Museum of California
Dorothea Lange/National Archives via Oakland Museum of California
A 1942 Dorothea Lange photo captured the scene of evacuees of Japanese ancestry and piles of their belongings on an Oakland residential street.
| October 1, 2026
In 2022, an exhibition presented by UCLA’s Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities used augmented reality to transport viewers back to the dark days of 1942, when thousands of Japanese Americans living in Los Angeles were ordered to be incarcerated in detention camps as part of the U.S. government’s response to World War II.
The exhibition, staged at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles, was dubbed “Be Here / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration.” It drew upon thousands of historical photographs, including many taken by government-employed photographers Dorothea Lange and Russell Lee. Some images were transformed into AR videos; others were enlarged so dramatically that museumgoers could see the reflections in the subjects’ eyes, including reporters and government officials who were standing just outside of the frame.
“This is an exhibit about what photographs reveal and what they conceal,” Michael Emmerich, director of the Yanai Initiative, said in a 2022 UCLA Newsroom announcement. “On one level, it is about what happened here in Little Tokyo and all along the West Coast in 1942, but it is also about the present. Even 80 years later, we are still grappling with anti-Asian violence and racism and still dealing as a society with the same civil rights issues.”
Now, “Be Here / 1942” is being exhibited anew in the Bay Area.
On display through December 27 at the Oakland Museum of California, the exhibition has been updated with new material, including photos that Lange took just across the street from the site where the museum sits today. Masaki Fujihata, the Japanese artist who created the exhibition, has also added a three-screen video of current Oakland residents, some of whom have connections to the 1940s incarcerations and some who have been affected by present-day anti-immigrant policies.
Visit the Oakland Museum website for more information about the exhibition, and visit UCLA Newsroom to learn more and view videos about the original exhibition in LA.