The Japanese American National Museum (JANM) mourns the passing of Kanji Sahara, a JANM charter member and docent, a beloved community member, and visionary in the Japanese American community.
Born in Hiroshima, he grew up in Los Angeles with his parents and three older sisters. During World War II he was incarcerated at the Santa Anita temporary detention center in California and the Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps in Arkansas. When his family resettled in postwar Chicago, he earned his BS in electrical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from Northwestern University.
After retiring from General Dynamics, later acquired by Raytheon Technologies, as an electrical engineer, Sahara became a JANM docent and a leader with the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coali-tion, often drawing on his own camp experiences.
He also led the efforts of the World War II Camp Wall, a memorial consisting of ten walls representing the ten American concentration camps and two walls for the Department of Justice and Immigration and Naturalization Service internment camps. The memorial will be built in Torrance.
“Kanji worked tirelessly to ensure that the incarceration story is never forgotten and serves as a warning of what happens when its lessons are ignored,” said Ann Burroughs, JANM president and CEO. “A deeply loved and revered member of the JANM family, his knowledge and dedication to connecting this history to the present and shaping the future will be profoundly missed.”