Browse > Interest Level > Adult
536 articles
And Then They Came for Us (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Expression through art, Power of the past, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Documentary film that provides an overview of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans while drawing explicit parallels to agitation against Arab Americans in the early months of the Trump Administration.
And There Are Stories, There Are Stories (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Coming of age, Coming of age, Power of the past, Self – inner and outer
- Available
Prose poem memoir by Momoko Iko that traces her family's journey out of the concentration camps and her subsequent upbringing away from Japanese American communities on the West Coast. She begins with her birth in 1940 to Issei parents, her fleeting recollections of her family's incarceration, and life after the war, first in Philadelphia, then Chicago . Various stories centering on racism, racial identity, interracial relations, and the legacy of the camps in the 1950s and 1960s follow, tracing the narrator's journey to becoming a writer.
Beacon Hill Boys (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 7-8
- Young Adult, Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Convention and rebellion, Family – blessing or curse, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Identity crisis, Power of tradition
- Available
Novel for young adults by Ken Mochizuki about a Sansei teenager's quest for identity and meaning in 1972 Seattle.
Bearing the Unbearable (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Importance of community, Power of the past
- Widely available
Documentary film on the incarceration of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, Washington , produced for the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial by North Shore Productions.
American in Disguise (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Identity crisis, Wisdom of experience
- Available
American in Disguise is Daniel Okimoto's account of his search for identity in America and Japan. The book was originally published in 1971 by John Weatherhill, Inc, with a foreword by James Michener.
American Pastime (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama, History, Sport
- Widely available
A 2007 feature film directed by Desmond Nakano that is based on true events that occurred at Topaz , an American concentration camp in Utah which held thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. The film's story focuses on the Nomura family, whose mother and father are both Issei , and their two Nisei children, Lane and Lyle. Following the signing of Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, the Nomuras, along with over 120,000 other Japanese living on the West Coast, are forced into desolate government camps across the country. To boost the morale of the younger inmates and help build a sense of community, Mr. Nomura, who was once a professional baseball player, forms an in-camp league within the concentration camp, in an attempt to to instill some sense of normality into their lives.
American Scrapbook (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical fiction
- Identity crisis, Family
- Widely available
Novel set in Manzanar and Tule Lake by prolific writer Jerome Charyn and published in 1969.
American Sons (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama
- Empowerment, Evils of racism, Quest for discovery, Role of men
- Widely available
Docudrama by Steven Okazaki about four Asian American male characters talking about the role of race in their lives. Though played by actors, the words spoken by each character come from interviews with real people.
American Fish (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Short, Drama
- Available
Short dramatic film about two Nisei women who run into each other at a grocery store and the dance that ensues when neither can remember who the other is. Humorous at first, the tone shifts when one asks about "camp" and other replies that she was in Tule Lake , invoking stereotypes of the camp and its inmates in the other. Directed by Jesse Wine, "American Fish" was based on the short story of the same name by R. A. Sasaki. It was screened as part of the Tule Lake Pilgrimage in 1996.
Betrayed Trust: The Story of a Deported Issei and His American-Born Family During World War II (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Memoir
- Coming of age, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Heartbreak of betrayal, Identity crisis, Immigrant experience, Losing hope
- Available
A Nisei shares his family's heart-wrenching experience of wartime incarceration and the complex background behind their decision to go to Japan instead of staying in the U.S. after the end of the war.
Betrayed: Surviving an American Concentration Camp (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Importance of community, Power of the past
- Widely available
Hour-long documentary on the Minidoka , Idaho, concentration camp adapted from the half-hour version used as the orientation film at the Minidoka National Historic Site. Betrayed aired nationally on public television stations in April 2022.
Beyond Barbed Wire (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Role of men, Disillusionment and dreams
- Available
A 1997 documentary film on the Japanese American soldiers of the 100th Infantry Battalion , the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the Military Intelligence Service who fought for the United States during World War II while some of their families were held in concentration camps. The film is based on interviews with numerous veterans as well as with their wives and adult children. Among topics touched on in Beyond Barbed Wire are friction between men from Hawai'i and the continental U.S. during basic training; the unusual story of Korean American Colonel Young O. Kim; the rescue of the Lost Battalion , and the continuing legacy of the veterans for their families. One unique aspect of the film is its treatment of the controversy over the role of Major General John Dahlquist , whom some veterans feel used the Nisei as "cannon fodder." In telling the story of the mass incarceration, …
Beyond Heart Mountain (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Poetry
- Widely available
Lee Ann Roripaugh's first collection of poetry, which was selected by writer Ishmael Reed as one of five manuscripts published in 1999 through the National Poetry Series competition. The central section of the book is an interconnected series of dramatic monologues written in the voices of various Japanese Americans incarcerated at the Heart Mountain camp.
Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Memoir
- Evils of racism, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Individual versus society, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy, Self – inner and outer
- Widely available
Memoir of Kibei scholar Minoru Kiyota (1923–2013) that focuses on the difficult World War II years that saw him incarcerated in American concentration camps and eventually renouncing his U.S. citizenship. Originally published as a Japanese language autobiographical novel in 1990, it was translated and reworked into an English language memoir published in 1997 by the University of Hawai'i Press.
Before They Take Us Away (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Desire to escape, Evils of racism, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Documentary film on " voluntary evacuation ," built around interviews with Japanese Americans whose families were among the roughly 5,000 who left the West Coast restricted area prior to the forced removal of Japanese Americans. After providing background on the prewar context and beginning of World War II, the bulk of the film focuses on the experiences of the families, most of whom moved to Utah or Colorado where they faced much hardship and discrimination, while also retaining their freedom. The film also specifically notes the case of Keetley Farms , a Nikkei settlement in Utah. The film is narrated in the first-person by Evelyn Nakano Glenn, who also reflects on her own family's wartime experience. The interviews are augmented by voice actors reading quotes from key officials and newspaper accounts from the time.
Bend with the Wind: The Life, Family, and Writings of Grace Eto Shibata (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Female roles, Power of tradition
- Available
Memoir of a Nisei woman—though written in the third person—that covers a nearly one hundred year history of a prominent San Luis Obispo area farming family and that ends with the author's graduation from college at age seventy-four.
Biography Hawai'i: Koji Ariyoshi (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, Biography
- Working class struggles, Change versus tradition, Convention and rebellion
- Widely available
Documentary film that profiles journalist, labor leader, and former Manzanar inmate Koji Ariyoshi . Produced as part of the Biography Hawai'i series, it aired on public television stations in Hawai'i in May 2005.
A Bitter Legacy (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Convention and rebellion, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Documentary film by Claudia Katayanagi that provides an overview of the Japanese American incarceration with a focus on resistance, in particular on the Moab and Leupp Isolation Centers and the events leading up to them. In addition to many interviews with scholars, former inmates, local residents (many of whom are Native American), and others, Katayanagi uses actors to reenact some key scenes in the story. She also uses Wendy Maruyama's Tag Project—an art installation consisting of thousands of tags similar to those attached to Japanese Americans and their possessions as they were being forcibly removed—as recurring motif between the eight chapters, from "Pre-War Days" to "Redress and Reparations."
The Bitter Memory: America's Concentration Camps (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice
- Widely available
Early film that provides an overview of the wartime forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast produced by the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. Bitter Memory tells the story through narration and interviews with former inmates accompanied by archival footage from Office of War Information/War Relocation Authority (WRA) films and WRA still photos. All footage—even contemporary interview footage and footage shot at Tule Lake —is in black and white. Identified inmate narrators include poet and playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi , Mary Otani, Michi Mukai, and Kumito Ishida. The bulk of the film deals with living conditions in the concentration camps—the lack of privacy, the breaking up of the family unit, employment, food and so forth—along with the loyalty questionnaire and segregation . The film is also known as Bitter Memories: Tule Lake , even though only the last few minutes of the film focus on Tule …
Both Alike in Dignity (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Evils of racism, Reunion, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short story by Chester Sakamoto about an elderly Holocaust survivor who mistakenly gets off the bus in Little Tokyo , where he meets an elderly Nisei man. One Sunday, on his weekly visit to a friend in Pasadena, Mr. Muncznik gets off the bus too early and ends up in Little Tokyo. Sitting to get his bearings, he finds himself next to a statue of a Japanese man. Friendly Mr. Sata stops and explains that it is a statue of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who risked his career and safety to help thousands of Jews escape Lithuania during the war. Conversation ensues about each man's wartime experience—Mr. Sata had lived in Little Tokyo before the war and had been sent with his family to Heart Mountain —revealing a startling coincidence.
Bridge of Scarlet Leaves (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Romance, Historical Fiction
- Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Everlasting love, Family – blessing or curse, Heroism – real and perceived, Love and sacrifice
- Widely available
Novel by Kristina McMorris that centers on an interracial romance between a white woman and a Nisei man during World War II.
A Bridge Between Us (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Coming of age, Role of women
- Widely available
Critically acclaimed 1995 novel by Julie Shigekuni that is both a multi-generational family saga about a Japanese American family in San Francisco and a coming-of-age novel centered on a fifth-generation Japanese American woman growing up in a four generation household. The story—which includes the family's incarceration at Heart Mountain —is told from the perspectives of four women of different generations who live together in the family home in San Francisco.
The Brighter Side of Dark: Toyo Miyatake, 1895-1979 (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Immigrant experience
- No availability
A 1996 short documentary film by Robert Nakamura about the life and career of Los Angeles photographer Toyo Miyatake . Through Miyatake's personal and artistic life (he was very much engaged with other modernists of the 1920s and '30s), the film reveals the vibrant artistic and intellectual milieu of Los Angeles's Little Tokyo district prior to World War II as well as the impact Executive Order 9066 and Miyatake's wartime incarceration had on his artistic career. Using a camera lens that he smuggled into the camp at Manzanar where he was incarcerated, Miyatake reconstructed a camera and eventually became the official camp photographer, producing iconic images of camp life and the landscape of the Eastern Sierras. After the war, Miyatake was able to reconstruct his photography business and resume work at his studio in Little Tokyo. For generations, he was the community's most trusted portrait photographer, enlisted for weddings, graduations, …
Block Seventeen (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Power of the past, Power of silence, Technology in society – good or bad
- Widely available
Novel by Kimiko Guthrie set in 2012 written in the first-person voice of a mixed-race Sansei woman who is affected by the legacy of her family's wartime incarceration in ways she initially denies, but comes to understand over the course of the story.
Blood Hina (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction, Mystery
- Family – blessing or curse, Hazards of passing judgment, Heroism – real and perceived, Love and sacrifice
- Widely available
The fourth book in the Mas Arai Mysteries series by Naomi Hirahara finds the Kibei gardener coming to the aid of his best friend, Haruo Mukai, whose impending wedding is interrupted by accusations of theft and by his sudden disappearance.