‘Proof I was there’: every Japanese American incarcerated in second world war finally named

Ireichō, a sacred book of names, lists all 125,284 people of Japanese descent who were held in camps across the US and is on display at an LA museum

Kanji Sahara was eight when his family was uprooted from their home in Los Angeles. It was 1942 and the family, along with thousands of other people of Japanese descent, was forcibly sent to live in barracks and horse stables – and eventually, War Relocation Authority camps, where they stayed until the end of the second world war. He would later recall standing behind a fence, watching people across the street go about their day, wondering why life was normal for them but not for him.

Sahara is now 88, and last month, he was among hundreds of people who visited the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo for the installation ceremony of a new exhibit dedicated to those who suffered a similar fate.