SACRAMENTO — The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program (CCLPEP) recently announced their fiscal year 2009-2010 CCLPEP grant recipients.

The CCLPEP was created with the passage of the California Civil Liberties Public Education Act (AB1915) in 1998. The legislation was authored by Assemblymember Mike Honda and was renewed in 2000 by Assemblymember George Nakano.

The CCLPEP provides competitive grants for public educational activities and for the development of educational materials “to ensure that the events surrounding the exclusion, forced removal, and incarceration of civilians and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry will be remembered and so that causes and circumstances of this and similar events may be illuminated and understood.”

CCLPEP grant recipients:

• The California Museum, Claudia French: “Uprooted! Oral History Project: Japanese Americans Remember World War II Internment”; $25,000. Life stories of Sacramento-area Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II and who are volunteer presenters during the museum’s annual two-month Time of Remembrance program will be video recorded as the first phase of this multi-phase project. These oral histories will enhance the museum’s permanent internment exhibit and ensure the stories are preserved.

• Center for Multicultural Cooperation, Brandon Wright: “Nisei Voices”; $10,000. Youth and adult volunteers will video record interviews with former internees whose stories have not been previously recorded. Interviews will be available on the Internet and will be duplicated on DVD for distribution.

• Central California District Council of the Japanese American Citizens League, Dale Ikeda: “Fresno Assembly Center Memorial Project”; $25,000. The story of the 5,344 Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Fresno Assembly Center, located at the Fresno Fairgrounds, will be displayed on 10 story boards created using stories and photos collected from the Fresno area during that time period. This project is a part of a larger project resulting from the partnership to develop a new Fresno Assembly Center Memorial.

• Amelia Chua: “Being Human, Being True”; $25,000. A short documentary film will be created to tell the stories of the incarceration experience of two Nisei, Lloyd and Marion Wake, and will explore how the experience planted the seeds for their social justice involvement in the San Francisco community from the 1950s to the present. Lloyd Wake is a United Methodist minister and Marion Wake is a mental health professional and teacher.

• Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, Tom Ikeda: “Preserving Nisei Life Stories in the Bay Area”; $25,000. Interviews with Nisei men and women in the Bay Area who were incarcerated during World War II will be video recorded, preserved, and transcribed. Interviews will be made available on the Densho Website.

• Friends and Family of Nisei Veterans, Brian Shiroyama: “Japanese American History / Nisei Veterans Exhibit”; $9,000. The existing Japanese American History / Nisei Veterans Exhibit aboard the USS Hornet Museum in Alameda, Calif. will be expanded and enhanced. The exhibit tells Nisei stories using memorabilia, artifacts and documents donated by Nisei.

• Antonia Grace Glenn: “The Ito Sisters”; $25,000. A documentary on the lives of three Nisei sisters who grew up in a Japanese American farming family in the Sacramento Delta in the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to recalling their internment experience, the film will include their recollections of the Great Earthquake, the Crash of 1929, segregated public schools and arranged marriages.

• Japanese American National Museum, Akemi Kikumura Yano: “Nisei Oral History Project”; $14,700. Stories of 25 of the Museum’s Nisei docents will be video recorded to preserve for future generations. The recordings will be digitized and uploaded to the museum’s Website and will be integrated into the Museum’s core exhibitions.

• Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC), Paul Osaki: Completion of “Transcending-The Wat Misaka Story” and DVD Distribution; $20,755. The film “Transcending-The Wat Misaka Story” will be completed, including the addition of a music score and mastering the film. The film will be distributed to California public libraries and University of California campuses.

• JCCCNC, Jeffrey Chu: “Dreams Finally Realized: The Untold Stories of California Nisei Forced Out of Higher Education”; $25,000. The stories of Nisei who were forced to leave college as a result of Executive Order 9066 will be video recorded. These individuals were recognized 67 years later with honorary degrees from the colleges they had been forced to leave. Reactions of their families and friends to the graduation ceremony will also be video recorded. The videos will be made available on the Internet.

• Lewis Kawahara: “College of San Mateo Asian Pacific American Film Festival: An Afternoon Matinee with CCLPEP Films”; $14,000. The College of San Mateo will screen CCLPEP-funded films in March 2011 in conjunction with the College’s second Asian Pacific American Film Festival. Filmmakers will be invited to address the audience for question-and-answer sessions following each screening.

• Wayne Maeda: “Manzanar Pilgrimage Program”; $10,000. A group of educators and college students will be selected to take part in the April 2011 Manzanar Pilgrimage to raise their awareness of the internment experience. Participants will have the opportunity to meet and talk with former inmates, and they will participate in a post-pilgrimage program to discuss and write about their experiences.

• Manzanar Committee, Brian Tadashi Maeda: “We Said, ‘No-No’”; $11,545. Interviews with Japanese American inmates will be video recorded and included in a rough cut of this documentary film about internees whose responses to the Loyalty Questionnaire resulted in their being sent to the Tule Lake Segregation Center, the harshest of the concentration camps.

• Wendy Maruyama, Linda Canada: “The Tag Project: E.O. 9066”; $25,000. An installation of artwork will be created replicating 120,000 tags, representing all individuals of Japanese descent imprisoned from 1942-1946. It will include the artist’s interpretation of the incarceration experience utilizing videography and blending historic materials, camp artifacts and new artwork.

• Claire Mix: “Ruth Mix Documentary — ‘We Must Make Right A Terrible Wrong’”; $15,000. The final editing and production of this documentary film about Ruth Mix will be completed. Mix, a Caucasian teenage girl, and her mother both worked at the Gila River, Ariz., concentration camp. The film will be duplicated on DVD for distribution.

• National Japanese American Historical Society, Inc., Francis Wong: “Treasures Revealed: Preserving Camp Artifacts”; $5,000. A series of artifact preservation workshops will be conducted to raise community awareness of the importance of preserving concentration camp objects. An instruction manual will be produced.

• Joanne Oppenheim: “Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son”; $20,000. A film based on the book “Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son, His Diary, Letters and Story from an American Concentration Camp to Battlefield 1942-1945.” It will also include newly located material in Hayami’s own words. Hayami was a 16-year old incarcerated at the Heart Mountain camp and later joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, losing his life at age 18.

• Pacific Citizen, Caroline Aoyagi-Stom: “Preserving Our Legacy: Digitizing the Pacific Citizen Archives”; $20,000. Issues of the Pacific Citizen newspaper from 1944 through 1955 will be digitized to preserve the contents, and the issues will be made available on the Internet in a searchable database.

• San Leandro Public Library, Nancy Fong: “Legacy of the Nisei Veterans — San Leandro Public Library”; $23,000. Interviews with former Japanese American World War II veterans and inmates will be video recorded. The interviews will be available on the Internet and will be duplicated on DVD for distribution to school, university and public libraries. Copies will also be sent to the Library of Congress.

• Paul Takagi: “Paul T. Takagi: Manzanar and After — A Memoir”; $15,000. A draft memoir of Paul T. Takagi will be written, covering a lifespan of 80 years. It will begin with Takagi as a farm boy and follow him to Manzanar as an inmate and later to his becoming a full professor at UC Berkeley. Takagi will share his observations about the reasons behind the internment.

• Diane Takei: “Best Way Cleaners”; $20,000. Research, interviews, and information-gathering will be completed in preparation for a historical novel related to the Los Angeles post-war Kibei concentration camp experience. A draft of the novel will be completed.

• Judy Tachibana and Barbara Takei: “Tule Lake Revisited, Revised Edition”; $10,000. “Tule Lake Revisited,” a brief history and self-guided walking tour of the Tule Lake concentration camp, will be revised and reprinted. The revised edition will contain new information on segregation and renunciations at the Tule Lake camp.

• Trustees of the California State University, Sue DeRosa: “The California State University: Gathering, Sharing & Celebrating Stories from Nisei Honorary Degree Recipients”; $23,000. Stories of approximately 250 California State University students who were removed to concentration camps will be video recorded, developed from interviews with the former students, or their family members, who were honored at CSU honorary commencement ceremonies. Stories will be made available on the CSU Website and duplicated on DVD for distribution.

• Tule Lake Committee, Inc., Barbara Takei: “Preserving the Tule Lake Stockade Jail”; $20,000. A Historic Structure Report of the Tule Lake Segregation Center stockade jail will be created. The report is one of the required steps in preserving a structure located on a National Historic Landmark site. Grant funds will be combined with National Parks Service grant funds to assist with site preservation and restoration.

• Watsonville Public Library, Heather Geddes: “Japanese American Digital Storytelling (California Central Coast)”; $14,000. Interviews with former inmates and World War II veterans will be video recorded. The interviews will be duplicated on DVD for distribution to libraries, schools, and non-profits and will also made available on the Internet.