Capitol Modern, the Hawaiʻi State Art Museum in downtown Honolulu, will open a travelling exhibition on 7 November tracing the lives of second-generation Japanese Americans who served in the United States Army during the Second World War. I Am An American: The Nisei Soldier Experience runs until 13 March 2027.

The show follows young men who enlisted even as their families faced suspicion, martial law and mass incarceration after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Through personal stories, photographs and objects, it examines how ideas of loyalty, duty and civil rights collided for soldiers whose Americanness was questioned at home while they fought abroad.

Hawaiʻi holds particular resonance for the subject. The islands supplied a large share of the Nisei troops who served in celebrated units such as the 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, as well as in the Military Intelligence Service, whose linguists worked in the Pacific theatre. The exhibition is staged in the No. 1 Capitol District Building, a historic former Armed Services YMCA in the heart of the capital's government quarter.

The exhibition's title, I Am An American, captures the claim at the heart of the story: men who asserted their belonging to a country that had, in many cases, confined their parents and siblings behind barbed wire. The show pairs that assertion with the record of what service cost, including the heavy casualties suffered by the 442nd, which became one of the most decorated units in American military history for its size and length of service.

Capitol Modern is the main public showcase for the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, and it more often spotlights contemporary Oceanic and Pacific practice. Hosting this historical travelling show underlines the museum's engagement with the islands' defining chapters. Further tour venues have not yet been announced.