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209 articles
Day of Independence (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- Coming of age, Family - blessing or curse, Self-reliance
- Available
A 2003 short dramatic film about one Japanese American family's World War II experience in an American concentration camp, told through the narration of a young baseball player, whose life is traumatically altered by the forced removal and his father's decision to expatriate back to Japan. The screenplay is based on the real-life experiences of playwright and executive producer Tim Toyama's family and adapted from a play Toyama wrote entitled "Independence Day".
Daniel K. Inouye – An American Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Patriotism – positive side or complications, Empowerment
- Available
Documentary film that covers the life and career of Daniel K. Inouye , Nisei war hero from Hawai'i and nine term U.S. Senator.
The Crystal City Story: One Family's Experience with the World War II Japanese Internment Camps (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Coming of age, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Immigrant experience, Reunion
- Available
Self-published memoir by Tomo Izumi about her family's internment in the Crystal City, Texas , internment camp and her life before and after the war in a small plantation town on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
Family Gathering (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Family – blessing or curse, Power of the past, Quest for discovery, Self-awareness
- Available
Documentary film by Lise Yasui that chronicles her exploration of her family's hidden history—especially that of her paternal grandfather, Masuo Yasui —through interviews and family home movies and photographs. One of the most acclaimed films about the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans, Family Gathering was nominated for an Academy Award in 1988.
Discoveries... America National Parks: Japanese American Incarceration, 1942-1945 (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, power of the past
- Available
Installment of the popular video series America National Parks produced by Bennett-Watt HD Productions that provides an overview of the Japanese American wartime incarceration and looks at contemporary efforts by the National Park Service and state and local organizations to preserve the former camp sites. In his review in Video Librarian , T. Keogh wrote, "Full of personal testimonies, this eye-opening travelogue is highly recommended." [1]
Dusty Exile: Looking Back at Japanese Relocation during World War II (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Evils of racism, Role of women, Progress – real or illusion
- Available
Memoir of the forced removal and incarceration and its aftermath by a sympathetic white schoolteacher at Poston .
Dear Miye: Letters Home from Japan, 1939-1946 (book)
- Books
- Memoir, Historical nonfiction
- Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Desire to escape, Displacement, Family - blessing or curse, Female roles, Identity crisis, Immigrant experience, Isolation, Loss of innocence, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Self-preservation, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Will to survive
- Available
A collection of letters written by a young Nisei woman in Japan who becomes stuck there during World War II to her best friend who is still in California.
Democracy Under Pressure: Japanese Americans and World War II (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Injustice
- Available
Documentary film on the wartime experience of Japanese Americans from the San Diego area, including their exclusion and subsequent incarceration at Santa Anita Assembly Center and Poston , as well as their return home. The story is told through the eyes of former inmates Ruth Takahashi Voorhies (born 1923) and Ben Segawa (born 1930), along with historian Don Estes.
Designing the Path: Japanese American Architect, Gyo Obata (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, Biography
- Circle of life, Expression through art, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Japanese-produced documentary film profiling Nisei architect Gyo Obata.
The Empty Chair (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Power of the past, Importance of community
- Available
Feature length documentary film by Greg Chaney that recounts the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from Juneau, Alaska, during World War II.
Enduring Democracy: The Monterey Petition (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Darkness and light, Importance of community, Power of words
- Available
Documentary film that tells the story of a petition signed by over four hundred white residents of the Monterey Bay area urging acceptance of returning Japanese Americans that appeared in the local newspaper in May 1945, claimed to be the only such petition to emerge from any West Coast area.
Gila River and Mama: The Ruth Mix Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Loss of innocence, Power of the past
- Available
Documentary film that tells the story of the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans through the eyes of Ruth Mix, who as a fifteen year old, accompanied her mother Frida, a teacher, to Gila River and lived among the inmates. Filmmaker Claire Mix is the daughter of Ruth.
Ganbatte: Sixty-year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (book)
- Books
- Memoir
- Capitalism - effect on the individual, Convention and rebellion, Empowerment, Important of community, Injustice, Rights - individual and societal, Self-awareness, Working class struggles
- Available
Kibei - Nisei labor organizer and communist shares his life story, including his unique experiences during World War II as the husband of a white woman with a mixed-race child incarcerated while he served with the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific Theater.
Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Role of women, Power of the past
- Available
A 2009 short documentary film about Fumiko Hayashida, a pregnant mother of two who was one of 227 members of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community who were forced from their homes in March 1942. Hayashida—or at least her image—became immortalized in a photograph taken of her holding her young daughter. First appearing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , the photograph became one of the iconic images of the roundup. Providing both a biographical portrait of Hayashida and telling the larger story of Bainbridge Island, the film also shows the then 97-year-old Hayashida revisiting the site of the former Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho.
Great Grandfather's Drum (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Importance of community, Power of the past, Power of tradition
- Available
Documentary film that tells the story of Japanese Americans in Maui through the story of Maui Taiko and its founder, Kay Fukumoto.
Four-Four-Two (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8
- Historical fiction
- Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Displacement, Forgiveness, Identity crisis
- Available
A popular and confident Nisei boy and his best friend enlist in the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team and are thrown into the horrific reality of combat in Europe.
Hidden Internment: The Art Shibayama Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice
- Available
A 2004 documentary film about the life of Art Shibayama, a Japanese Peruvian who was forcibly taken from his home in Peru in 1944 when he was thirteen years old, and interned in a Department of Justice camp in Crystal City , Texas, for the duration of World War II. This film explores the lesser-known history of the Japanese Latin American detention, where over 2,000 Latin Americans were essentially kidnapped from their countries and interned in American government camps, to be used as political pawns between countries. Using first-person narrative and archival footage, the film shows how despite their traumatic experiences and wrongful treatment, Shibayama and other Latin Americans have been denied redress that was awarded to Japanese Americans in 1988 for their loss of civil liberties and forced wartime incarceration. Directed by Casey Peek and produced by Irum Shiekh.
Heart Mountain: Three Years in an Internment Camp (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Will to survive
- Available
A short documentary film from 1997 that documents the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans at the American concentration camp in Heart Mountain , Wyoming. The film also documents daily life for the Japanese American incarcerees, who endured living in rough barracks, surrounded by barbed wire in sub-zero temperatures and dust storms, as well as the political and personal conflicts that arose with the government-issued " loyalty questionnaire " and draft resistance . In addition to interviews with former inmates and local residents, the film uses previously unseen footage from the camp. The film was produced by KCSM, a San Mateo, California, public television station as part of The New Americans series and was directed by Dianne Fukami, with David Hosley serving as executive producer. It was originally titled Heart Mountain: Three Years in a Relocation Center . Funders for the documentary included the Chevron Corporation, the Henri and …
Right of Passage (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Empowerment, Female roles, Importance of community, Power of the past
- Available
Documentary film by Janice D. Tanaka that chronicles the convoluted twenty-year history of the Redress Movement .
Resettled Roots: Legacies of Japanese Americans in Chicago (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Importance of community, Power of silence, Rebirth
- Available
Documentary film on the evolution of the Japanese American community in Chicago . Directors Anna Takada and Maria Pimentel tell the story using a generational framework with a brief prologue on Japanese immigration and the prewar Issei era and a longer segment on the wartime roundup and incarceration centered on the Nisei , before turning to Nisei and Sansei recollections of resettlement to Chicago and growing up there after the war. Many of the Sansei recall their parents' silence about their wartime experiences. The last segment focuses on Yonsei and recent activism featuring 2019 footage from an all camps reunion in Chicago and on a protest march that saw Chicago Japanese Americans drawing on their history to protest immigrant detention and deportation today.
12-1-A (play)
- Plays
- Available
A play by Wakako Yamauchi that was first produced in 1982. Set in the concentration camp in Poston , Arizona—the same camp the author was incarcerated in—from May 1942 to July 1943, the play follows several Japanese American families at Poston as their characters grapple with the loyalty questionnaire , military service, and possible resettlement . The title of the play refers to the camp address of the Tanaka family, block 12, barracks 1, unit A. Yamauchi wrote the play while the Rockefeller Playwright in Residence at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. It premiered on March 11, 1982, at East West Players in Los Angeles, the third of four plays in their "Internment Camp Series". Subsequent productions include Asian American Theater Co, San Francisco (1982); Kumu Kahua Theatre, Honolulu (1990); University of California, Los Angeles (1992); and California State University, Los Angeles (2012).
39 Months at Tule Lake (book)
- Books
- Memoir
- Empowerment, Importance of community, Injustice
- Available
The diary of a white staff member at Tule Lake offers his take on the tumultuous events there after it was made a segregation center .
A Stone Cried Out: The True Story of Simple Faith in Difficult Days
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Change versus tradition, Faith versus doubt, Forgiveness, Identity crisis, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice
- Available
A Christian minister reflects on his life, including the difficult years he and his family spent in wartime concentration camps.
A Taste for Strawberries: The Independent Journey of Nisei Farmer Manabi Hirasaki (book)
- Books
- Memoir
- Available
The memoir of Manabi Hirasaki , a successful Nisei farmer, with reflections on experiences ranging from his childhood working on his father's farms, his family's " voluntary evacuation " to Grand Junction, Colorado, voluntary service in the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and his successes in the strawberry industry after World War II.
Stand Up For Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- Injustice, Coming of age
- Available
Short film that dramatizes the story of Ralph Lazo , a Los Angeles high school student of Mexican and Irish descent, who voluntarily chose to go to Manzanar to support his Nisei friends and protest the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.