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54 articles

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Alice and the Bear (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Companionship as salvation, Desire to escape, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Power of the past
Widely available

Short story by Kiyoshi Parker about an old woman whose trip to a Little Tokyo store with her great-granddaughter brings back memories of her camp experience. Alice Miyamoto visits Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for the first time in thirty years with her family. After lunch, her daughter suggests they go visit the Go For Broke Monument . But on the way, her four-year-old great-granddaughter drags her into a store and picks up a stuffed Totoro toy. Alice is immediately reminded of a stuffed bear she had as a child of about the same age that was her constant companion when she was in an unspecified concentration camp.

American Dreams (book)

Books
Grades 3-5
Grades 3-5
Historical Fiction, Children's
Evils of racism, Coming of age, Injustice, Growing up – pain or pleasure
Available

Chapter book for children about two eleven-year-old girls in Hollywood, one white and one Japanese American, in the weeks just before and just after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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.

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.

Burma Rifles: A Story of Merrill's Marauders (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Historical Fiction, Children's
Heroism – real and perceived, Injustice, Vulnerability of the strong, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Limited availability

Book for young readers by Frank Bonham centering on a Nisei intelligence soldier in Burma during World War II. Published in 1960, it is among the first children's books to depict the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Comforting the Afflicted (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
No availability

Moderated panel discussion led by Phil Shigekuni with four prominent Japanese American Protestant ministers with ties to Los Angeles who were incarcerated during World War II. Three—Rev. Paul Nagano , Rev. John Miyabe, and Bishop Roy Sano—were at the Poston , Arizona, concentration camp, while Rev. Sam Tonomura was a boy in British Columbia caught up in the forced removal of Japanese Canadians during the war. The discussion covers the men's experiences during the war and the role of the church during the incarceration, particularly with regard to issues of "loyalty" and resistance. The men talk about the role of the church in the Redress Movement , in bridging divides in the Japanese American community today, and in the anti-Muslim/Arab climate following the 9/11 attacks. The format of the film largely follows that of a "talking heads" type television program, with the insertion of still historical photographs.

A Crossroad Called Manzanar (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Short, History
Growing up - pain or pleasure, Loss of innocence
No availability

Short dramatic film about two nine-year-old girls who are best friends—Aya Matsui and Penny Chan—in the final days before Aya's family will be forced to board busses for Manzanar . On what will be her final day of school, Penny—wearing the "Proud to Be Chinese" button than her mother pins on her every morning—comes to pick up Aya as usual. But after being harassed by white children on their way to school, they decide to spend the day playing in the fields and parks before heading home. Aya's family eats on the floor, the rest of their things packed or sold off. The next morning, the Matsuis report for their exile and are put on busses for Manzanar. Penny comes by their house, finding it empty and, shunned by the other kids, rides alone on the school bus to school.

Crossroads: Boyle Heights (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Immigrant experience, Working class struggles, Growing up – pain or pleasure
Widely available

A documentary film compiled from life histories of past and present residents of Boyle Heights, a working-class neighborhood east of downtown Los Angeles. From the 1920s-1950s, Boyle Heights was a racially and ethnically diverse home to immigrants from Mexico, Japan, England, Germany, Russia and Armenia as well as people from the east, the south and the southwest portions of the United States who lived, worked and worshiped in the area. The film also explores how the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and their postwar return affected businesses and friendships. While many Japanese Americans faced hostility in other parts of Los Angeles, residents of Boyle Heights share stories of a deeper empathy with the plight of those incarcerated. Crossroads: Boyle Heights was originally produced to accompany the exhibition Boyle Heights: The Power of Place (2002) at the Japanese American National Museum .

Doka B-100 (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Character – destruction, building up, Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Ernest Nagamatsu on the difficult adjustment to civilian life of a group of World War II veterans. Written in the first person voice of an ex-GI named Hamamoto in 1954, "Doka B-100" coveys both Hamamoto's alienation and the welcoming embrace of Little Tokyo Los Angeles . Estranged from his domineering father because of the way he left the service (despite serving heroically in the 442nd , he quit before his time was up) and his choice of social work as an occupation, Hamamoto's wife had decided to go back to her family in Chicago with their daughter to get away from the arguments. Finding a small apartment in Little Tokyo and a part time job in a diner, he finds a niche in starting to counsel the veterans who would gather in a Little Tokyo pool hall. That work eventually leads to a paying job with the …

Flowers from Mariko (book)

Books
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Grades 3-5
Children's, Historical Fiction
Growing up – pain or pleasure, Heartbreak of betrayal, Optimism – power or folly, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Working class struggles
Widely available

Picture book for children about a Japanese American family's World War II incarceration and difficulties in restarting their lives after the war, told from the perspective of a young girl of about nine of ten. Mariko, her little sister Emi, and their parents live in Los Angeles before the war, where their father works as a gardener. When they are forced to leave, he leaves his gardening truck and equipment with their landlord. When Japanese Americans are allowed to return to the West Coast in 1945, the family makes plans to return. However their father finds that his truck and equipment have been sold, and the former landlord is nowhere to be found. The family is forced to live in a government-run trailer park upon their return, and her father is unable to find work. One day, he finds some old equipment in the trash, along with some flower seeds. …

From a Different Shore: An American Identity (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Change versus tradition, Importance of community, Power of the past, Reunion
Limited availability

Documentary film produced by Great Britain's The Open University that examines the Japanese American community by focusing on three families in Los Angeles.

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.

Gardens of Hope (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Companionship as salvation, Everlasting love, Evils of racism, Loss of innocence, Self-awareness
Widely available

Novel about the short but life changing romance between a young white man and a Nisei man during World War II. The story begins in 2004, as the elderly Jack Henry asks his nephew to drive him to the Manzanar National Historic Site. On the way, he tells the nephew the story of his connection to the place. As the story begins in Los Angeles the fall of 1942, Jack seems to have everything: a loving family, a smart and attractive fiancée, and good prospects for a career as a teacher. However as a closeted gay man, he is confused and unhappy. Drawn to Pershing Park downtown, he has a series of furtive sexual encounters with other men before meeting Hiro, a handsome young Nisei. Their affair is immediately different and deeper than the others. When the outbreak of war separates them, Jack impulsively decides to become a teacher at …

Heiji (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Female roles, Injustice, Power of the past
No availability

Short story by Jeff Tsuyoshi Matsuda about a disheveled elderly Nisei widower who goes to a empty field in his Westchester, California, neighborhood every day for reasons that no one can figure out. In slowly revealing the reason for his quest, Heiji Taguma's wartime family history is revealed. His family had farmed twenty acres in the area before the war, but lost their crops and their farm in the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Heiji's father Masu was among the Issei arrested by the FBI and was taken to the Bismarck , North Dakota internment camp, eventually rejoining his family at Manzanar . But he returned a broken man: while Heiji resettled in Chicago , he refused to leave Manzanar and died there just after the end of the war. Heiji's odd ritual seemed to have been triggered by the death of his wife Keiko, who …

I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 7-8
Children's
Displacement, Evils of racism, Injustice
Widely available

Book aimed at middle school audiences that tells the larger story of the Japanese American World War II removal and incarceration through the experiences of one typical Nisei teenager.

Las Vegas Charley (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Disillusionment and dreams, Temptation and destruction, Vulnerability of the meek, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Hisaye Yamamoto about an Issei man named Kazuyuki Matsumoto, who works as a dishwasher at a Las Vegas restaurant while gambling away his wages. In flashback, we learn of his life story: boyhood in Kumamoto prefecture, then migration to the U.S. where he becomes a successful farmer in Santa Maria, California, and is soon joined by a "picture bride" wife, Haru and two sons. But Haru's death in childbirth after the birth of their second son changes Kazuyuki's life decisively. He sends the two boys to live with his mother in Japan and becomes a migrant laborer. At first, he sends regular remittances home, but he soon picks up a gambling habit and the payments gradually come to an end. He later brings his Kibei sons back to the U.S., where they start a new farming venture in Orange County, California, this one less successful. Then comes …

The Legacy of a Cemetery (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Reunion, Wisdom of experience
Limited availability

First person reflections on a trip back to his hometown of Los Angeles by a man who had settled in New Jersey after leaving the Jerome , Arkansas, concentration camps some thirty years earlier. A visit to Evergreen Cemetery east of downtown Los Angeles brings back memories of his forced removal in 1942, remembrances of Nisei soldiers he knew who are buried there, and memories of his deceased family members.

Letters to Memory (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Optimism – power or folly, Power of the past, Quest for discovery
Widely available

Incarceration-centered history of one Japanese American family told through short vignettes inspired by letters, photographs, and other objects in the family archive, as written by acclaimed novelist Karen Tei Yamashita.

Little Tokyo U.S.A. (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Thrillers
Evils of racism, Fear of other
Limited availability

Notorious 1942 Hollywood movie that depicts Japanese American leaders in Los Angeles as being part of a Japanese spy ring and that actively advocates the expulsion and incarceration of Japanese Americans using actual documentary footage.

Little Women (A Multicultural Transposition) (play)

Plays
Grades 9-12, Adult
Coming of age, Desire to escape, Family – blessing or curse, Female roles, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
No availability

Play by Velina Hasu Houston that reimagines Louisa May Alcott's 19th century novel Little Women , setting it in early postwar Los Angeles with four Japanese American sisters at its center.

Living in Color: The Art of Hideo Date (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Injustice, Immigrant experience
Available

Retrospective exhibition featuring the work of Issei painter Hideo Date at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) that opened in 2001. Curated by Karin Higa, Living in Color draws on works Date donated to JANM as well as works held by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum from the 1930s to the 1980s. An established artist by the 1930s, Date was sent to Santa Anita and Heart Mountain during the war, where he taught art and formed an Art Students League at the latter. Best known for his watercolor and gouache painting before the war, he turned to pencil drawings while incarcerated due in part to the difficulty of obtaining painting materials while in camp. The exhibition includes several of these drawings. Unlike artists such as Henry Sugimoto or Estelle Ishigo , Date's wartime drawings do not depict scenes from the concentration camps, most …

Lone Heart Mountain (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Displacement, Evils of racism, Hazards of passing judgment, Injustice
Limited availability

Illustrated memoir of life at Heart Mountain by artist Estelle Ishigo , a white woman married to a Nisei .

Makapuu Bay (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Disillusionment and dreams, Facing reality, Lost love, Names – power and significance, Reunion
Widely available

Short story by Wakako Yamauchi about a divorced middle-aged Japanese American writer who goes to a literary conference in Honolulu where she runs into an old boyfriend from the war years. In flashback, we learn that Sachiko—nicknamed "Pinky" while incarcerated in Poston with her father—had met Mitch Ochiai at the camp swimming hole, where she asked him to teach her to swim. They become a couple and continue to see each other when she resettles in Chicago while he attends the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Minnesota. But her father's illness—and eventual death—forces her to return to Poston, while Mitch heads off to war, and they lose touch. Sachiko ends up marrying Joe Noda, her block manager, and settling in Los Angeles. Though Sachiko is divorced and Mitch has never married, a rekindling of the romance in Hawai'i is not to be.

Manzanar and Beyond (book)

Books
Memoir
Coming of age, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Importance of community, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
Available

Prominent Nisei attorney recounts his life, including his experiences as the administrator of the hospital at Manzanar concentration camp and his role in landmark legal battles advocating for redressing injustices experienced by Japanese Americans.

Manzanar, Diverted: When Water Becomes Dust (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Capitalism – effect on the individual, Displacement, Man against nature
Available

Documentary film on Manzanar that focuses on the region's relationship with water and with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns much of the land and water rights in the area. The film also juxtaposes the forced removal of Japanese Americans to Manzanar with the forced removal of Native Americans from the Manzanar area in the 19th Century. The film also looks at the contemporary water related issues that saw Japanese Americans, Native Americans, and local white environmentalists come together. Much of the Japanese American perspective comes from Sue Kunitomi Embrey , the co-founder of the Manzanar Committee , and her family.

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