Then They Came for Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans During WWII and the Demise of Civil Liberties” is the second exhibition hosted by Alphawood Gallery, which occupies a former MB Financial Bank on the corner of Fullerton and Halsted in Lincoln Park. The first, “Art AIDS America Chicago,” was a spectacular and affecting collection of works about AIDS. “Then They Came for Me” isn’t quite as vast or impressive as “Art AIDS America,” but the former is equally urgent and moving—a necessary visit for anyone in Chicago during the next few months. Though the internment of Japanese-Americans in the mid-1940s isn’t entirely ignored in studies of American history, the period is often overshadowed by the Holocaust and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Especially at the current moment, when discussions of domestic civil liberties and immigration are at a boiling point, it’s critical to take a close look at the U.S.’s past behavior, in a tumultuous time when people in power made rash, racist decisions that reflected the worst facets of the American experiment.

What stands out most of all about “Then They Came for Me” is its thoroughness. The exhibit begins with Japanese immigration to America in the 19th century and examines virtually every aspect of Japanese life in the States until just after World War II. In the process one can learn about how Japanese immigrants collaborated with Mexican-Americans to create the Japanese-Mexican Labor Association, which protected the rights of immigrant farmers in California, even though several states passed alien land laws that tried to block Japanese-American citizens from gaining long-term leases on land. There are numerous artifacts of wartime paranoia, such as a Life magazine article titled “How to Tell Japs From the Chinese.” One of the great constants in the exhibit is a series of panels from Citizen 13660, a graphic nonfiction book by Miné Okubo, placed at different points in the exhibit. The illustrated memoir recounts Okubo’s experiences in the internment camps, and through clever turns of phrase she describes her temporary home’s terrible conditions: “We had to make friends with the wild creatures in the camp,” she writes, underneath a black-and-white drawing of her trying to get comfortable under a blanket, “especially the spiders, mice, and rats, because we were outnumbered.”

Through 11/19: Wed-Thu 11 AM-8 PM, Fri-Sun 11 AM-6 PM Alphawood Gallery 2401 N. Halsted 773-687-7676alphawoodgallery.org Free