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41 articles

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Journey to Washington (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Self-reliance, Patriotism - positive side or complications, Empowerment
Limited availability

Ghostwritten autobiography by Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawai'i, authored with Lawrence Elliott and published in 1967. One of the first autobiographies by a Nisei , Journey to Washington was published as Inouye was finishing his first term as a U.S. Senator from Hawai'i and preparing to run for reelection. The book covers his life up to that time, beginning with his grandfather leaving Japan to come to America to pay off a debt and ending with his father visiting the White House to visit President John. F. Kennedy. A success story that established a template for many Nisei memoirs to come, the book reinforced the " model minority " narrative then current. Reader's Digest also excerpted the book in its February 1968 issue. The book includes three forewords, by President Lyndon Johnson, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield.

Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir, Children's
Evils of racism, Facing darkness, Family – blessing or curse, Injustice, Loss of innocence, Power of the past
Widely available

Incarceration memoir of life at Pinedale Assembly Center , Tule Lake , and Minidoka , by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, a seventeen-year-old Nisei at the time of her and her family's forced removal from their Washington state farm. First published in 2005 by NewSage Press, it was followed by a young reader's edition in 2010.

The Loom (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Fiction
Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Facing darkness, Loneliness as destructive force, Motherhood, Power of silence
Widely available

Short story by R. A. Sasaki that portrays the life of a Nisei woman looking both backwards and forwards after the death of one of her daughters. Born and raised in San Francisco where her family ran a boarding house, the unnamed woman graduated from the University of California before being incarcerated with her family in Tanforan and Topaz during World War II. Returning to San Francisco after the war having married a Kibei man she had known from before the war, she has four daughters while her husband works in the flower industry. Devoted to her daughters, she is at a loss as they leave the house to pursue their own lives and after one dies in a mountain climbing accident. Her daughters' efforts to bring her out of her torpor are largely unsuccessful until one gives her a loom, through which she is able to express the feelings …

Mary Osaka, I Love You (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Everlasting love, Immigrant experience, Nationalism – complications
Widely available

Short story by acclaimed writer John Fante about the love between a Filipino American immigrant man and a Nisei woman that takes place in Los Angeles as World War II breaks out. A part of Fante's intended novel on Filipino Americans, it was first published in Good Housekeeping magazine in October 1942.

Months of Waiting, 1942-1945 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Art, History
Expression through Art, Displacement, Injustice
No availability

The first group exhibition of art created in the wartime concentration camps. Produced by the California Historical Society in 1972 as a companion to its Executive Order 9066 photographic exhibition, Months of Waiting toured several venues from 1972 to 1974.

Phantoms (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Historical Fiction
Facing darkness, Heartbreak of betrayal, Injustice, Power of the past
Widely available

Novel by Christian Kiefer centering on a white Vietnam War veteran who tries to unravel the story of what happened to a Nisei World War II veteran, gaining insight into his own experiences in the process.

Picture Bride (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Historical fiction
Change versus tradition, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Facing reality, Female roles, Immigrant experience, Importance of community, Will to survive
Available

The fictional account of a picture bride , from her arrival in the U.S. to the life she and her husband create for themselves with their daughter, to her experience of incarceration during World War II.

Only What We Could Carry: The Santa Anita Assembly Center (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
History
Displacement, Injustice
Limited availability

Temporary exhibition at the Ruth and Charles Gilb Arcadia Historical Museum about the nearby detention facility. Drawing on photographs, objects, and issues of the Santa Anita Pacemaker in the museum's collection, Only What We Could Carry opened in November 2009. The museum also includes the story of the Santa Anita Assembly Center as part of its permanent gallery on the history of Arcadia.

Resistance at Tule Lake (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Power of the past
Limited availability

Documentary film that tells the story of the Tule Lake concentration camp, with a focus on the post-segregation period, through interviews with former inmates, archival images, and scenes from contemporary pilgrimages .

Farewell to Manzanar (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Displacement, Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Working class struggles
Widely available

Popular memoir that tells the story of one family's forced removal and confinement at Manzanar through the eyes of a young girl. First published in 1973, Farewell to Manzanar has sold over one million copies and is one of the most widely read accounts of Japanese American incarceration and its aftermath.

Desert Exile (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Biography, Non fiction
Injustice, Displacement, Evils of racism
Widely available

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family is an autobiography by noted children's book author Yoshiko Uchida that chronicles her experiences in the years before and during her incarceration in an American concentration camp during World War II. It was originally published in 1982 by the University of Washington Press and reissued with a new introduction by Traise Yamamoto in 2015.

Home Again (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Character - destruction and building up, Displacement, Evils of racism
Available

A 1955 novel authored by a former War Relocation Authority (WRA) official that tells the epic story of one Japanese American family from California, covering their prewar travails, their wartime incarceration, and their return to California after the war. The book was heavily promoted particularly within the Japanese American community and widely reviewed.

Relics from Camp (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Art, History
Displacement, Injustice
Available

Art installation by Kristine Yuki Aono that debuted at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in 1996. The installation featured soil collected by the artist at each of the ten War Relocation Authority camp sites installed in shallow 3 x 3 square boxes on the floor with glass over them. At each venue, Aono sought community members who lent personal objects from themselves or other family members who had been in each camp that were installed in that camp's box. The exhibition was viewed by walking on the glass over the boxes.

City in the Sun (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Displacement, Evils of racism
Limited availability

1946 novel by Karon Kehoe that represented the first full-length work of adult fiction to dramatize Japanese American confinement.

Success Story, Japanese American Style (article)

Articles
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Non-fiction
Overcoming, Social mobility
Available

Often cited popular account of Japanese American "success" by a University of California demographer, one of several such articles to appear in the '60s and '70s.

The Nisei: The Pride and the Shame (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Documentary
Injustice, War - glory, pain, necessity, tragedy
Widely available

Documentary film centering on the Japanese American wartime experience that was part of CBS television's weekly The Twentieth Century series. The half-hour episode was the first retrospective documentary on the wartime exclusion and incarceration experience.

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