LOS ANGELES (Kyodo) -- The Japanese American National Museum has unveiled an interactive video interface that will allow visitors to talk to survivors of the World War II-era incarceration of Japanese Americans in U.S. camps.

By simulating conversations with actor George Takei and three other prominent voices of the generation, with the survivors' words preserved in digital format, the Los Angeles museum aims to keep the history of the mass wartime detention alive in perpetuity.

Takei, June Aochi Berk, Mary Murakami and Takashi Hoshizaki collectively contributed 19 days' worth of recorded material, each answering a wide range of questions in front of a camera.

The footage is mediated through the StoryFile video platform, which matches a visitor's question to an appropriate response from the pre-recorded interviews. The artificial intelligence-based technology does not generate any video or audio, according to StoryFile.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 led the United States to enter the war. Starting in 1942, around 120,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals were imprisoned as "alien enemies" despite not being convicted of any crimes, and many of them permanently lost their businesses and property.

Takei, the 88-year-old activist, author and actor known for his role in the original "Star Trek" series and movies, was forcibly removed from his Los Angeles home and sent to the Rohwer War Relocation Center in Arkansas along with his family when he was 5.

Aochi Berk, 93, who grew up in the Little Tokyo area of Los Angeles, was also imprisoned as a child at the Arkansas camp. She hopes the interactive exhibit will help their history reach young people.

"If you stand there and listen to my story, you will carry my story for future generations," Aochi Berk said.

Hoshizaki, 100, resisted being drafted into the U.S. military during the war along with more than 62 others imprisoned at the Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming.

"I would say over 90 percent of people in the United States have never heard this history," Hoshizaki said, adding he is curious to see how visitors react to the format of the exhibit.

First utilized by the museum in 2021 for a decorated war veteran of Japanese descent, the platform also features Murakami, 98, who spent her high school years imprisoned at the Topaz camp in Utah.

"There have been so many times when I've talked to her and wished that the entire world was in the room to hear her story, too," said her granddaughter Carolyn Reiko Hoover, 27.

An early preview of the exhibit was opened to the public on Saturday. It is slated to open along with the entire renovated museum in late 2026.