Maui High students earn silver at National History Day Project, website highlight role of nisei during WWII
KAHULUI — Three Maui High School students launched a website that pays tribute to a less familiar piece of history, a research project that took second place among thousands at the first-ever National History Day Virtual Competition.
In the high school division, John Andrei Balanay, Jaelen Matsuda-Williams and Sarah Sakakihara designed a website called the “Military Intelligence Service: Japanese Americans Breaking Barriers to Help End the War,” which earned them national recognition last week.
“As a Japanese-American, I was kind of drawn to the history about World War II, and the MIS was such an important part that not many people know about,” Sakakihara, a graduating senior, said on Friday morning. “I thought it went pretty well considering we had to transfer to online. The History Day program I thought did a really good job, like not canceling, because a lot of competitions have been canceling their competitions (due to COVID-19).
“So I think we were really lucky that we got to compete at state and nationals.”
The project, which focuses on nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) soldiers breaking through racial, cultural and identity barriers during WWII, took them five months to complete while balancing school and other extracurricular activities. The students said they wanted to bring more light to an important, but somewhat less discussed, piece of history.
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