In the summer of 2010, Japanese American National Museum volunteers created 30-second digital video shorts sharing their personal stories related to artifacts from the exhibition Common Ground: The Heart of Community.

This video clip shows Kathryn Madara, a Wednesday & Friday Group Tour Docent at the museum. The photo she chose shows Issei women working on a tuna assembly line on Terminal Island, an area near San Pedro, California. The community was destroyed by the forced removal of Japanese Americans during World War II, and is now federal land.

These video shorts were developed with 2010 summer interns, Evan Kodani and Alexandra Giffen, as part of on-going volunteer sessions examining and re-envisioning the role the Museum will play in the 21st Century. They were created in conjunction with the Frank H. Watase Media Arts Center.

Support for volunteer programming was generously provided, in part, by Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc., The William Randolph Hearst Foundation, and The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. The internships were provided through the Summer 2010 Getty Grants Program for Multicultural Undergraduate Internships to Los Angeles Area Museums & Visual Arts Organizations.