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, Eileen Sakamoto, a Wednesday & Saturday Volunteer in the Museum Store and Visitor Services, talks about a 1927 baseball team photograph from Utah. In the photo, she made a surprising personal discovery—her father.

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.