Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego - Downtown

About this audio guide

This guide to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego's Downtown building follows what happened at this Santa Fe Railway baggage depot on the morning of April eighth, nineteen forty-two, when eleven hundred fifty of the city's Japanese American residents were ordered here under Civilian Exclusion Number Four. It traces their twenty-four hour train journey to the Santa Anita racetrack, and the years it took before that wartime order was finally challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. Sculptor Richard Serra later lined the building's arcade with six blunt steel blocks, shaped like the luggage this depot once held. Stand close to them as you pass through the arcade outside.