The Riverside Metropolitan Museum (RMM) is pleased to announce a major initiative, Reading the Walls: Riverside Stories of Internment and Return, to document the personal recollections of Riverside’s Japanese and Japanese American community before during and immediately following World War II.

This significant project is made possible through funds provided by the California Council for the Humanities and the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program. The RMM is collecting stories and documents and working to integrate them into a curriculum package for teachers, aligned with local and national 11th grade U.S. History standards.

Through oral histories and primary source materials available online and in a published workbook, teachers and students will be able to draw on the real life experiences of Riversiders to illuminate the political, social and economic causes and consequences of Executive Order 9066. These materials are expected to be available to teachers in time for the 2007/2008 school year.

For more information about the National Historic Landmark Harada House Preservation Project
Museum Curator of Historic Structures and Collections, Lynn Voorheis