Welcome to the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community (BIJAC) website. As you explore this site you will learn about the history of our community on Bainbridge Island as well as our current activities that maintain community connections, celebrate diversity, and promote civil liberties education.

We have compiled a collection of photographs, artifacts, and recorded firsthand accounts that illustrate the human stories behind the exclusion and internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Bainbridge Island was the first community forcibly removed from its homes and incarcerated in the Manzanar Assembly Center in the California desert. The personal stories behind these events teach us important lessons in humanity, civil rights, and citizenship.

The Nidoto Nai Yoni, “Let it not happen again,” Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial is built at the site where this first group of internees was taken from our island. The memorial honors those who suffered this injustice and the friends and neighbors who stood beside them and welcomed them back. Designated a satellite of the Minidoka Internment National Historic Site in Jerome County, Idaho, the Bainbridge Island memorial preserves this important moment in history.

Learn more about BIJAC