Editor’s Note: The Kansha History Project, founded by Amanda Mei Kim and volunteers, is a project to restore, document, and publish the devastating impact on Japanese American farmers and their families who lost their farms and more during World War II. Volunteers are needed to transcribe property transfer records starting mid-December; and the project is working with impacted families and descendants to publish the data for San Benito and Contra Costa counties in early 2024. The project needs hundreds of volunteers to complete the full record set of 10,000 farms.
Petaluma Bounty’s gleaning coordinator Allison has been volunteering with the group and shares the following information and thoughts. You can reach Allison at bountyhunters@petalumabounty.org.
The Kansha History project illuminates the injustices suffered by Japanese American farmers subjected to land seizures and internment by the US government during World War II. It is a nonprofit effort to record this troubling history by transcribing federal farm agency records from the 1940s. I served as a volunteer transcriber during the project’s launch this summer to help create a first-of-its-kind public database full of information about what Japanese American farmers lost during forced land transfers. Now, the project is ready to train its next group of volunteers.
Making this history accessible will raise awareness of farmers’ loss of assets like crops, land, and housing into which they had invested their sweat and their savings. Farm agency records from the period also shed light on innovative sustainable farming practices that many Japanese American farmers were using decades before our current regenerative agriculture revolution. Publicizing this data has the power to restore a sense of continuity to families whose land and livelihood were taken from them and who were left for years without answers.
Kansha History volunteers analyze scanned land transfer records detailing who took over farmers’ land, what structures were present at the time, and which crops were grown there before and after the land changed hands. These data cards remind me of nothing so much as the catalog cards that libraries used in the past to track who checked out which books, but the powerful stories contained in each farm agency record reverberate across generations alienated from their roots. Analyzing the cards opens a window into the lives of displaced farmers, and while catching a glimpse of affected families’ losses can be painful, it is rewarding to contribute to a meaningful effort toward creating justice and transparency.
Kansha History is seeking volunteers to help process farm agency records online starting December 15, 2023 through January 2024. If you’d like to support this effort, join me as a Kansha History volunteer by signing up here.