February 2017 marked the 75th anniversary of a grim moment in the history of U.S. civil rights. On February 19, 1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the mass incarceration of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans in camps across the United States. The order was the culmination of years of discrimination against people of Japanese ancestry, which escalated after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. Approximately 60 percent of the people incarcerated were American citizens.

As we observe this anniversary and contemplate the impact and implications of more recent presidential decrees, ASHP/CML has begun work on the sixth installment in the Mission US series of free online interactive games produced in collaboration with public television station WNET/Thirteen and game designer Electric Funstuff—one with particular relevance to contemporary events. Prisoner in My Homeland will focus on the experience of of a Japanese American teenage boy who—amid the chaos and terror of incarceration—must make choices that reflect broader strategies for survival and resistance. Funded by the National Park Service Japanese American Confinement Sites program, Prisoner in My Homeland and its supporting educational resources will, like its five preceding games, involve and inform middle- and secondary-school students about a critical chapter in the U.S. past.

With more than one million registered users in classrooms across the country, Mission US has garnered numerous citations and awards—in 2016 alone cited as a Best Learning Game Finalist by Games for Change, winner of the Parents’ Choice Gold Award, and nominated for a Daytime Emmy.