Using AI/Machine Learning to Extract Data from Japanese American Confinement Records

With funding from a 2019 National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites grant, The Bancroft Library digitized the complete set of Form WRA-26 “individual records” for more than 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in War Relocation Authority camps during WWII. The library partnered with Doxie.AI to utilize AI/machine learning to automate text extraction from over 220,000 images; our goal was to improve upon and collect information not previously recorded in the Japanese American Internee Data file held by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). The project team worked with technical, academic, legal, and community partners to address ethical and logistical issues raised by the data extraction process, and to assess appropriate access options for the dataset(s) and digitized records.