Ancestry website cataloguing names of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The names of thousands of people held in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II have been digitized and made available for free, genealogy company Ancestry announced Wednesday.

The website, known as one of the largest global online resources of family history, is collaborating with the Irei Project, which has been working to memorialize more than 125,000 detainees. It’s an ideal partnership as the project’s researchers were already utilizing Ancestry. Out of over 60 billion records Ancestry holds, nearly 350,000 have been found to be pertinent to camp detainees and their families.

People will be able to look at more than just names and tell “a bigger story of a person,” said Duncan Ryūken Williams, the Irei Project director.

“Being able to research and contextualize a person who has a longer view of family history and community history, and ultimately, American history, that’s what it’s about — this collaboration,” Williams told told The Associated Press exclusively.