Burroughs also noted the historical significance of the museum itself, which sits on a plaza where, 80 years ago, hundreds of Japanese American families lined up and boarded buses to incarceration camps. “I consider it to be one of those ground zero points in the civil rights history of this country,” she said. The Ireichō is one phase of the Irei Monument Project, an interactive, multifaceted memorial founded by Rev. Clement Hanami, the museum’s art director and vice president of exhibitions, said Williams has compiled the most accurate and extensive record to date of Japanese American incarceration. “It’s a very Japanese and Japanese American way of respecting the ancestors and their histories,” Hanami said.

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