During World War II, Japanese American scientists and engineers imprisoned at the Manzanar War Relocation camp were engaged in an experimental project to grow guayule and process it into latex, a needed war materiel. In this way, they contributed to the American war effort, despite their race-based incarceration. The guayule research project undermines the rationale for the wartime confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans. The laboratory at Manzanar partnered with universities, private industry, and government bureaucracy as an early instance of the military-industrial complex.

A pedagogical experiment in Asian American History courses partnered classes with the Cornell University Library. Students using its Japanese American Relocation Center Records archive learned to apply historical analysis through an intersectional framework of race, class, gender, and generation. Their finished projects formed a digital exhibition—a research tool accessible to the wider public.