Browse > Genre > Memoir

79 articles

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My Name Is Yoshiko (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Names – power and significance, Optimism – power or folly, Role of women, Working class struggles
Available

Memoir of an ordinary Nisei woman that includes her wartime incarceration in American concentration camps. Yoshiko Kawaguchi (born in 1921) was the eldest daughter in a farm family in Downey, California. After attending sewing school, World War II hits and the family ends up in the horse stalls of Santa Anita , then in the Rohwer , Arkansas, concentration camp. Resettling in Michigan, she eventually gets a job at a fancy restaurant. She meets and marries a Nisei from Kaua'i and settles in Chicago, where her sisters and parents also eventually settle. Her husband becomes a mail carrier, and they adopt a girl. Later, they move to back to Downey and retire in Kaua'i.

Nisei Odyssey: The Camp Years (book)

Books
Memoir
Displacement, Facing reality, Injustice, Patriotism - positive side or complications, Rights - individual or societal, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Limited availability

Nisei's recollections of his experiences incarcerated in an assembly center and concentration camp during World War II as well as a recounting of various stories he remembers hearing from others both before and during the war.

Nurse of Manzanar: A Japanese American's World War II Journey (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Non Fiction, Memoir
Displacement, Facing reality, Importance of community, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Role of women
Available

Edited diary of Toshiko Eto Nakamura (1910–94), a nurse who volunteered to work at the hospital in Manzanar during World War II.

Out of the Frying Pan: Reflections of a Japanese American (book)

Books
Memoir
Heroism - real and perceived, Injustice
Available

A prominent journalist reflects on his life and career, including the difficult years during World War II during which he and his family were incarcerated because of their Japanese ancestry.

Passing It On--A Memoir (book)

Books
Memoir
Coming of age, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Rebirth, Rights - individual or societal
Available

Leading human rights activist reflects on her life, including her insulated childhood and the wartime incarceration experience that awakened her lifelong commitment to advocacy for all marginalized peoples.

Pleasure of Plain Rice (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Desire to escape, Self-awareness, Working class struggles
Limited availability

Essay/story by Hisaye Yamamoto on racial identity that focuses on her month-long stint as a domestic in Springfield, Massachusetts, during World War II. She begins the piece by noting various white Americans she knows who have changed their ethnic-sounding last names to less ethnic sounding ones, noting the futility of her doing such a thing as a Japanese American, citing the mass incarceration during World War II. Anxious to leave Poston , where she and her family ended up, she and two of her younger brothers are allowed to leave for Massachusetts in the summer of 1944. While her fifteen-year-old brother Yuke is placed in a summer camp in the Berkshires, the War Relocation Authority office in Boston assigns her and her seventeen-year-old brother Jemo to become domestic servants for a wealthy widow in Springfield. Both initially dislike the stern and formal family and the job duties that had to …

Reluctant Samurai: Memoirs of an Urban Planner (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Family – blessing or curse, Fulfillment, Importance of community, Progress – real or illusion
Limited availability

Memoir by a Nisei man that recounts his agricultural upbringing, his time in American concentration camps, and his postwar career as an urban planner who was a key figure in the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles.

Sideways: Memoir of a Misfit (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Convention and rebellion, Family – blessing or curse, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Available

Memoir of a young Nisei woman who was born in the Minidoka , Idaho, concentration camp. The story focuses on her often strained relationships with her parents, grandparents, and eight siblings in 1950s Chicago.

Silver Like Dust (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Power of the past, Role of women
Widely available

Memoir published in 2011 centering on the author's grandmother, who slowly tells the author the story of her life and incarceration at Heart Mountain , over the course of several visits with the author. Her grandmother's detailed narrative from the perspective of a young woman of twenty when the war breaks out—the happy childhood in Los Angeles, the shock of war and forced removal, meeting her husband at the Pomona Assembly Center , marrying in camp, and having her first child there, before resettling in Seabrook Farms , New Jersey—is contrasted with the author's vastly different life as a contemporary young woman of roughly the same age when she begins the project. Having grown up in Pennsylvania, apart from her grandmother in Florida, the visits also allow the two women to really get to know each other for the first time. The book includes various brief historical snippets that provide …

Sleeping on Potatoes: A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower (book)

Books
Memoir
Coming of age, Desire to escape, Displacement, Facing reality, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Social mobility
Limited availability

Memoir of a Nisei, from his early childhood as the son of a violent father and a loving mother, his experience incarcerated at Manzanar , his career as a successful physicist at Honeywell, and his years after retiring.

Some Lines for a Younger Brother... (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Death – inevitable or tragedy, Disillusionment and dreams, Growing up – pain or pleasure
Limited availability

First person recollection of the author's younger brother centering on the impact the World War II incarceration had on him. The youngest of eight children, Tets was doted on by his older siblings, but devastated when his father died when he was eight. A few years later, he had become a demoralized teenager in Manzanar who began skipping high school classes upon his return to Los Angeles after the war. Joining the army to see the world, he is almost at the end of his hitch when the Korean War breaks out. Sent into combat, he is killed in action. Years later, the author recalls attending the first Manzanar Pilgrimage and seeing the image of Tets as a child once again.

Song of Anger: Tales of Tule Lake (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Darkness and light, Displacement, Injustice
Available

Reflections and observations of a social worker in Tule Lake segregation center during World War II.

Stanley Hayami, Nisei Son (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

Book built around the wartime diary and letters of Stanley Hayami that document his incarceration at the Heart Mountain , Wyoming, concentration camp and his military service in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team .

Starting from Loomis (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Injustice
Widely available

Autobiographical short story by Hiroshi Kashiwagi that traces his life from his childhood on farms in the Loomis, California, area, his family's forced removal and incarceration at the Marysville Assembly Center (which Kashiwagi refers to as "Arboga," an alternative name) and Tule Lake , and his decision to answer "no-no" to the loyalty questionnaire both out of anger and protest and in alignment with the rest of his family. While describing the difficult conditions of concentration camp life, the narrator—who was two years out of high school at the time—takes his first tentative steps in the world of theater and literature while in camp. His father's absence from the family from prior to the war due to tuberculosis looms large. Written from the perspective of an old man looking back at his youth, the story ends with the lifelong ramifications of his wartime incarceration and his "no-no boy" status.

Starting from Loomis and Other Stories (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Immigrant experience, Power of the past
Widely available

Memoir by playwright, poet, actor, and librarian Hiroshi Kashiwagi in the form of twenty-five stories, most of them first-person vignettes from various periods of his life. Edited by Tim Yamamura, Starting from Loomis was published by the University of Colorado Press in 2013 as part of the George and Sakaye Aratani Nikkei in the Americas Series.

Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected Writings (book)

Books
Adult
Adult
Memoir, Poetry
Coming of age, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Wisdom of experience, Working class struggles
Widely available

Memoir by Nisei playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi (1922–2019) told in short prose vignettes, poetry and a play.

The Block Manager: A True Story of Love in the Midst of Japanese American Internment Camps (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Self-preservation, Displacement
Available

Incarceration memoir of a Nisei woman from Stockton, California, who becomes a block manager at the Stockton and Rohwer detention camps and who meets and marries her husband at the latter. The narrative follow the couple to Tule Lake and postwar Japan.

Though I Be Crushed: The Wartime Experiences of a Buddhist Minister (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Displacement, Immigrant experience, Injustice
Limited availability

Translated memoir of an Issei Buddhist priest focusing on his wartime incarceration at several camps.

To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Family - blessing or curse, Growing up - pain or pleasure, Identity crisis, Importance of community, Love and sacrifice
Widely available

Famous actor and celebrity recounts some of the most important periods of his life, including his early childhood spent at Rohwer and Tule Lake concentration camps.

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.

Unfinished Message (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Motherhood
Available

Seemingly autobiographical story by Toshio Mori about his mother and brother. The story begins in 1945 in Topaz , where the author's mother can't sleep one night because of anxiety about her son, who is serving in Europe. She later finds out that he was wounded in battle that night. Later, they arrange for his transfer to a hospital in the U.S, deciding on one near the family home in California. When they leave camp and return home, she is able to visit him at the hospital. However, she later dies in her sleep before her son is released. After her death, the author and his brother hear tapping on the window of the room in which she died, which they interpret as her message to them. Written by Mori in 1947, the story was first published in his 1979 short story collection, The Chauvinist and Other Stories and reprinted …

White Road of Thorns: Journalist's Diary—Trials and Tribulations of the Japanese American Internment During World War II (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Facing darkness, Will to survive
Available

Wartime diary of Issei journalist and Japanese language school teacher Hisa Aoki that covers the period prior to her return to Japan on the second voyage of the Gripsholm . Originally published in Japan in 1953, it was translated into English by Archie Miyamoto at the behest of Aoki's elder daughter, Mary Yoko Nakamura.

We the People: A Story of Internment in America (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Role of women
Available

Memoir of Florin, California-based Nisei educator and activist Mary Tsukamoto co-authored by Elizabeth Pinkerton and published in 1987 when Tsukamoto was seventy-two. Though the book covers her entire life, well over half of it focuses on her and her family's wartime confinement, their resettlement in the Midwest, and eventual return to California.

A Brother Is a Stranger (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Change versus tradition, Desire to escape, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Individual versus society, Nationalism – complications, Power of tradition
Available

Memoir of a young Japanese immigrant/refugee Christian about his upbringing and travails in Japan, his journey to the U.S. and his wartime internment, and his postwar observations in Japan. Published in 1946 by the John Day Company, it was among the first books by a Japanese American to appear after the war.

Jinan: A Japanese American Story of Duty, Honor, and Family (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Capitalism – effect on the individual, Family – blessing or curse, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Available

Memoir of a Kibei man whose story takes him from Los Angeles to Hiroshima and back, to " voluntary evacuation " in Colorado, and postwar business success back in Southern California.

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