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.

In this video, Roy Sakamoto, a Wednesday & Saturday Group Tour Docent, talks about how the citizenship papers on display in the exhibition are very personal for him. His Issei father wanted to go back to Japan after World War II, but he later changed his mind and decided to apply for citizenship.

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.