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Toyo's Camera: Japanese American History During WWII (film)
- Films and Video
Feature length documentary by Japanese filmmaker Junichi Suzuki that was released in 2009 and was the first of a trilogy of movies by Suzuki on the Japanese American World War II experience. Though the film begins by telling the story of Issei photographer Toyo Miyatake and his photography of Manzanar , it proceeds to a provide a broad overview of the entire exclusion and incarceration experience, including the Redress Movement of the 1980s. A well-known feature film director in Japan, Suzuki moved to Los Angeles in 2001 and learned about the incarceration experience from a neighbor who had been held at Tule Lake . Toyo's Camera had a brief theatrical run in Los Angeles and was broadcast in Japan on BS Japan satellite television and the Japanese History Channel. Suzuki followed up Toyo's Camera with 442: Live with Honor, Die with Dignity (2010) and MIS: Human Secret Weapons (2012).
Tradition (book)
- Books
- Widely available
Young adult novel about the impact of a family of Japanese American resettlers on a Chicago area community and high school. The first novel by prolific author Anne Emery (1907–84), Tradition was published in 1946 by The Vanguard Press.
Uncle Gunjiro's Girlfriend (play)
- Plays
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Evils of racism, Power of the past, Reunion, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
- Limited availability
Performance piece that incorporates storytelling, music, dance, and multimedia elements to expose the secret of Brenda Wong Aoki's family: her great-uncle's marriage to a white woman and the subsequent split in the family.
Uncle Yozo (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Disillusionment and dreams, Importance of community, Optimism – power or folly
- No availability
Comical story by Ted Tajima about an Issei man at an unspecified concentration camp who enlivens the first Christmas in camp by elaborately playing Santa. A regular contributor of stories to the Rafu Shimpo holiday edition, Tajima taught at Alhambra High for 35 years and led their acclaimed journalism program.
Uncommon Courage (film)
- Films and Video
Uncommon Courage: Patriotism and Civil Liberties is a 2001 documentary film that tells the story of Nisei in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during World War II. The 86 minute documentary was produced, directed, and written by gayle k. yamada of Bridge Media for KVIE, a public television station in Sacramento, California. The film debuted on KVIE and other public television stations in California on May 31, 2001, and was shown on many other stations later that year. In addition to the full version, there is also an hour long version. Primary funders for the film included the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program , The Freeman Foundation, Jack and Kiyo Hirose, George T. and Sakaye Aratani , and The Henry and Tomoye Takahashi Charitable Foundation.
Tokyo Rose: Victim of Propaganda (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Facing darkness, Individual versus society
- Available
Television documentary for A&E network's "Biography" series that sympathetically tells the story of Iva Toguri d'Aquino and the myth of "Tokyo Rose."
Tondemonai-Never Happen! (play)
- Plays
Tondemonai—Never Happen! , a two-act play written and directed by Soon-Tek Oh (then referred to as Soon-Taik Oh) that premiered in Los Angeles in 1970, is a theatrical drama that portrays the experience of Koji Murayama, a Nisei who experiences flashbacks to his traumatic wartime experience in the Manzanar camp. Tondemonai is notable not only as the first professionally-staged theatrical work to center on the wartime confinement of Japanese Americans, but for its forward-looking discussion of race and sexuality.
We Are Not Free (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Children's, Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Facing darkness, Importance of community
- Widely available
Young adult novel by Traci Chee that tells the wartime incarceration story through the eyes of a group of teenage friends from San Francisco.
We Said No! No!: A Story of Civil Disobedience (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Convention and rebellion, Heroism - Real and Perceived, Injustice
- Limited availability
Documentary film by Arnold Tadao Maeda that focuses on life at post-segregation Tule Lake .
We the People: The Stage Production (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Loss of innocence, Power of tradition
- Available
Short film that documents the performance of the elementary school age students of Jan Ken Po Gakko in Sacramento on July 20, 2000. The production is highlighted by a play performed by the students based on Mary Tsukamoto and Elizabeth Pinkerton's book We the People .
What We Could Carry (play)
- Plays
One-woman show developed by Nikiko Masumoto, based on the testimony of thirteen people from the Los Angeles hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians in 1981. Masumoto developed the 45-minute piece as part of her graduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 2011. In 2013, she performed the piece at two Days of Remembrance in California and in various other venues throughout the state. A Yonsei and fourth generation farmer, playwright Masumoto works at her family's organic farm and is the daughter of acclaimed writer and farmer David Mas Masumoto .
What, No Sushi? My Solar-Powered History at a Japanese-American Internment Camp (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Injustice, Power of the past, Family – blessing or curse
- Widely available
Book aimed at elementary school children about three young brothers from Alaska who take a time machine to experience the mass exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II with their great-grandmother in California.
When Rabbit Left the Moon (film)
- Films and Video
- Widely available
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Video essay by Emiko Omori on the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 that traces the story of the wartime forced removal and incarceration through moving and still images and spare original music by Janice Giteck and Todd Boekelheide. The film begins with images of the Issei period, moving on to images of the incarceration, and to various aspect of life in the concentration camps beginning with happier scenes before turning to harsher ones, including images of post-segregation Tule Lake and documents describing shooting victims at Manzanar and draft resistance . The film moves on to images connected to Nisei soldiers in camp and on the battlefield before ending with camp cemeteries and images of the sites today. The title refers to a Japanese proverb and also to Omori's 1999 documentary, Rabbit in the Moon .
When the World Winds Down (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Isolation, Lost love
- Limited availability
Short story by Sharon Hashimoto about a watch repairman who fixes a gold watch brought in by a young man who reminds him of his late brother. Fred Fujita is one of the last remaining Nisei businessmen in the old Japanese section of Seattle. Agreeing to fix the gold watch at the end of one day, he decides to work on it at home, observing that his late wife would have objected to his doing so. While working on the watch, he recalls his brother Jimmy—the night at Heart Mountain when the seventeen-year-old Jimmy tells him he is going to enlist, trying to talk him out of it, and receiving word that he is missing in action.
When We Were Warriors, Part 1 (film)
- Films and Video
Dramatic short film written and directed by Lane Nishikawa that centers on the lifelong relationship between a Nisei soldier and the Jewish man whom he liberated from a Nazi death camp during World War II. The film is an adaptation of the play The Gate of Heaven , written by Nishikawa and Victor Talmadge, who also star as the main characters. Produced in 1999, the 33-minute film was funded in part by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund and the 100th/442nd/MIS WWII Memorial Foundation.
When You're Smiling: The Deadly Legacy of Internment (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Family – blessing or curse, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Identity crisis, Power of the past
- Available
Autobiographical film by Janice D. Tanaka about growing up Sansei in Los Angeles in the 1960s and 1970s amidst parental silence about their wartime incarceration. It was one of several films about aspects of the incarceration funded by the Civil Liberties Public Education Fund .
Who's Going to Pay for These Donuts, Anyway? (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Family – blessing or curse, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Experimental documentary film by Janice Tanaka that centers on her finding and reuniting with a father and an uncle—one diagnosed as mentally ill and the other conventionally successful—neither of whom she had seen since childhood.
Why is Preparing Fish a Political Act? (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, Biography
- Convention and rebellion, Loss of innocence, Power of silence, Power of words, Role of women, Self-awareness
- Available
Short documentary film by Russell Leong that profiles Sansei poet Janice Mirikitani . Mirikitani reads several of her poems (from the collections Awake in the River and Shedding Silence ) and talks about her grandmother's resourcefulness; her rejection of her Asian heritage as a young college student and her first husband and daughter; the impact of the Asian American Movement; and her involvement with Gilde Memorial Church and her second husband Cecil Williams. In the final segment of the film, Mirikitani talks about the impact of the Japanese American incarceration on her family and on the community as a whole and reads the poem "We, the Dangerous."
Woman With a Blue Pencil (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Mystery, Historical Fiction
- Character – destruction, building up, Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Disillusionment and dreams, Evils of racism, Heroism – real and perceived, Manipulation
- Widely available
Novel about a pulp mystery novel written by a young Nisei as World War II breaks out, his interactions with a sometimes overzealous editor, and his protest in the form of an unpublished manuscript centering on the Nisei private detective he was forced to remove from the novel.
Yankee Samurai (film)
- Films and Video
Israeli produced film on the exploits of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team told through archival footage, interviews, and contemporary footage of battle locations, including scenes of veterans returning to the Vosges Mountains in France for the unveiling of a monument. The 50-minute film was written and directed by Katriel Schory. Film historian Glen M. Mimura refers to it as one of "the two most prominent internment documentaries of the 1980s," along with Loni Ding's The Color of Honor . [1]
You Don't Know Jack: The Jack Soo Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Available
Feature-length documentary film on singer and actor Jack Soo . Based on interviews with friends and colleagues along with many clips from his film and television appearances, You Don't Know Jack also covers his time at Tanforan and Topaz during World War II.
You Who Are 25 (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Circle of life, Power of the past, Role of men
- No availability
Short story by Ted Tajima that recounts the arduous birth of a boy in a concentration camp and which contemplates that young man's fate in the very different world of twenty-five years later. Despite the title, the story is written in a third-person voice and does not directly address the young people it is about. Tajima, a high school teacher and frequent contributor to the Rafu Shimpo holiday edition, published the story in the 1967 issue.
A Young American with a Japanese Face (essay)
- Essays
- Widely available
Early first-person account of the issues facing Nisei written by an anonymous Nisei and published in the popular anthology From Many Lands , edited by Louis Adamic , in 1940. The account was based on the life of Charles Kikuchi and adapted by Adamic from Kikuchi's writings.
Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Convention and rebellion, Evils of racism, Empowerment, Importance of community, Working class struggles
- Available
Documentary film profiling Nisei political activist Yuri Kochiyama co-produced and co-directed by Patricia Saunders and Rea Tajiri.
Winter in My Soul (film)
- Films and Video
Documentary film about Heart Mountain produced by KTWO, a commercial TV station based in Casper, Wyoming. Produced in 1986, it was one of the first to focus on a specific camp and was notable for including the story of the draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain. The title comes from a poem written by Heart Mountain inmate Miyuki Aoyama and published in the camp newspaper, the Heart Mountain Sentinel .