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Background of the NARA Digitization Project |
| The success of that effort prompted the Historian for the MIS and
442d RCT of Hawaii, Ted Tsukiyama, to urge the JAVA to continue to copy
the documentation at the National Archives and Records Administration
(NARA) facility at College Park, MD.
It was at this time when JAVA was just becoming a presence on the internet, that the proposal was made to switch from making paper copies, which only increased access to the documents to a second location (i.e., Hawaii as well as College Park) to making digital copies which could be made available to a world-wide audience via the internet. With the sponsorship of the 442nd Club in Hawaii and the JAVA, a laptop computer and a scanner were purchased, a database to catalog the information scanned to facilitate research via keywords was developed, and a new crew of volunteers was recruited and led by Fumie Yamamoto (one of the original members of the research team). Since then, hundreds of pages have been scanned and converted to Adobe Acrobat Reader format, which anyone with internet access can use for free to read the documents. Since 2006, two modifications were made to the scanning procedures: first, a Kodak color strip was added at the bottom of the scan so that true rendering of the original can be reproduced if necessary; and second, the location of the document at NARA is included so that researchers can find the original if necessary. |