Other Hirahara Collections & Exhibits

Beginning with the Hirahara Family’s 2009 Anaheim exhibit, Frank C. Hirahara's photos have also been a part of the city's ethnic families collage in the "Anaheim - A Walk Through Local History" exhibit at the Carnegie Library, reflecting the family's prominence in the city's history and how they have continued to promote the City of Anaheim. Due to their generosity in sharing their family's rich history, they have allowed many Japanese American families to discover a piece of history that they never knew existed as well as bring attention to the beginnings of the Japanese and Japanese American farms, businesses, and churches that began in Anaheim during the early development of Orange County.

In 2011, Washington State University received a National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant to digitize and preserve the HIrahara photo collection for future generations. As Frank's daughter Patti carries the story forward, donations of many of the family’s documents, artifacts, and photos continue to tell the Japanese-American story in collections throughout the United States.

The WSU George and Frank C. Hirahara photo collection has been utilized in five documentaries about the Japanese American incarceration, and at the world premiere of the new American musical “Allegiance” at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego in 2012, which will make its Broadway debut at the Longacre Theater in November of 2015.

Artifacts from the Hirahara Family Heart Mountain Collection are now on display at the Yakima Valley Museum in Yakima, Washington. Their “Land of Joy and Sorrow: Japanese Pioneers of the Yakima Valley” exhibit runs through 2018, with the museum utilizing some of the photo panels from the City of Anaheim's Hirahara exhibit in 2009. This 1,500 square foot exhibit won the Washington Museum Association's Award of Exhibit Excellence in 2011, and is one of the most popular exhibits at the Yakima Valley Museum. From this exhibit, George Hirahara's Heart Mountain softball was donated by Patti Hirahara to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History in Washington DC, and is currently on display in the museum's "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War" exhibition in their WWII section on Japanese Internment.

  Washington State:

Washington State University
Hirahara Collection

Private Internment Camp Photos
Destined for WSU

Yakima Valley Museum Exhibit

Former WSU President Elson S. Floyd
Photo by Steve Nakata, WSU

  Portland, Oregon:

Oregon Nikkei Legacy Center

Densho Digital Repository

Digital Project Aims to
Preserve Stories

Photo by Curtis Suyematsu,
Reflections Photography

  Washington DC:

Smithsonian Day of Remembrance Exhibit

Day of Remembrance press release

Hirahara Softball at Smithsonian 

Photo by Richard Strauss,
Smithsonian Institution