It’s amazing what you can find when...

It’s amazing what you can find when you clean out a drawer.

Last year, members of the American Friends Service Committee found a whole drawer filled with documents on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

“Memories of the event had sat in a drawer for 50 years,” said AFSC development director Claire Gorfinkel. “I must say I’m not a historian, but there was a sense of awe.”

The documents are now on display at the Friends House in Pasadena.

Gorfinkel was one of the committee members who found the memorabilia while getting ready to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the organization’s arrival in the Pacific Southwest.

After the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces, many people feared that the West Coast was the next target. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order, and residents of Japanese descent were rounded up and detained in camps for the duration of the war.

The Friends (also known as Quakers) protested the internment through the Service

Committee. They wrote letters, among other things, and many of those letters and other documents landed in a file drawer.

“We have a (camp) pass that was issued by the war relocation authority, the name tag of one camp inmate and a ration book,” Gorfinkel said. “We also have two scrapbooks of (newspaper) clippings that really describe the mood of the community at the time. Some of them are astonishing in their racism.”

Gorfinkel, whose father represented internees when they sued the government for their losses after the war, decided that the items belonged in an exhibit. She enlisted the help of Tosh Kawahara, a former internee.

“I needed somebody from the Japanese community to work with me,” Gorfinkel said. “We put out the word through volunteers in the area to Japanese-

Americans to contribute their work,” which they did, adding artwork, photographs and other memorabilia.

The exhibit, at 980 N. Fair Oaks Ave., is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. There is no admission charge.