Browse > Interest Level > Grades 6-8

121 articles

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Redress: The JACL Campaign for Justice (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
Limited availability

Documentary film produced by Visual Communications for the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in 1991 documenting the JACL's role in the Redress Movement , which had recently culminated in the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 . Written and directed by John Esaki, the film was shown at Days of Remembrances and other events. William Hohri , a frequent critic of the JACL, wrote a letter to Japanese American vernacular papers that compared the video to "how history was manipulated in the old Soviet Union" noting the omission of the corm nobis cases and non-JACL contributors to the movement. In response, Cherry Kinoshita, the JACL's national redress chair, noted the video's goal "to document JACL's role in the redress effort," and not to tell a comprehensive story of redress. [1]

Starting Over: Japanese Americans After the War (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Rebirth, Power of the past
Widely available

Documentary film centering on the return of Japanese Americans to their homes after their exclusion and incarceration in concentration camps.

Stand Up For Justice: The Ralph Lazo Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Injustice, Coming of age
Available

Short film that dramatizes the story of Ralph Lazo , a Los Angeles high school student of Mexican and Irish descent, who voluntarily chose to go to Manzanar to support his Nisei friends and protest the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Searchlight Serenade (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art
Available

A 2012 documentary film on Japanese American swing dance bands in the World War II concentration camps. Produced by Claire Reynolds for KEET, a Eureka, California, based public television station serving California's northern coast, the hour long documentary debuted on October 30, 2012. The film was funded by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program, the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program , and the Humboldt Area Foundation (Victor Jacoby Artist Grant).

After Silence: Civil Rights and the Japanese American Experience (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Patriotism - complications, Fear of other, Power of the past
Limited availability

Documentary film that focuses on the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, Washington , as recounted through the perspective of Dr. Frank Kitamoto, who was a child during World War II. The story is told through interaction between Kitamoto and a small group of high school students from Bainbridge High School as they develop archival photographs from the incarceration and discuss its relevance to post 9/11 America. The film ends with the 2002 dedication of a memorial and plaque marking the site of the Bainbridge Islanders' departure. After Silence was produced by the Bainbridge Island Historical Society as part of an exhibition on the community's World War II experience, with funding from the Washington State Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Charles W. Gaugl Foundation.

Tanforan: From Race Track to Assembly Center (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Displacement
Available

Documentary film on Tanforan , a former horse racing track that became the site of a wartime " assembly center " for incarcerated Japanese Americans during World War II. The film includes interviews with many former inmates of Tanforan, some of whom lived in what were once horse stalls, including Maya Nagata Aikawa, George and Michiko Uchida, Tomoye Takahashi, Hid Kashima, Sox Kitashima, Dave Tatsuno , Yoneo Kawakita, Hiro Katayama, Sachi Kajiwara, Sugar Hirabayashi, Hiro Fujii, Yo Kasai, Chizu Togasaki, Tomoko Kashiwagi, Toru Saito, and Jan Matsuoka. Tanforan was produced by KCSM, a San Mateo, California based public television station as part of The New Americans series and was directed by Dianne Fukami. Funders for the film included the Chevron Corporation and the Ray and Peggy Daba Fund.

Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Displacement, Necessity of work
Available

Traveling photographic exhibition on Japanese Americans who left the concentration camps on short term leave to work as farm laborers in the summers of 1942 and 1943. The exhibition features forty-five photographs by Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee , who photographed farm labor camps that housed the Japanese Americans, including one in Nyssa , Oregon. The exhibition also includes a short video that include interviews with several Japanese Americans who worked as farm laborers.

The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945 (exhibition)

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

The first-ever national exhibition of more than 130 paintings and other works of art produced by Japanese American artists during their incarceration in the World War II American concentration camps, timed to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 , which authorized the mass incarceration of over 120,000 Japanese Americans. The exhibition was curated by Karin Higa and jointly coordinated by the Japanese American National Museum , the UCLA Wight Art Gallery, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. It first opened at the Wight Art Gallery in Los Angeles on October 13, 1992, and ran until December 6, 1992, then subsequently traveled to the San Jose Museum of Art (January 15-April 10, 1994), Salt Lake Art Center (July 1994), Honolulu Academy of Arts (September 1994), and the Queens Museum New York (May 11-July 16, 1995).

Under the Blood Red Sun (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8
Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Growing up – pain or pleasure, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

Acclaimed novel for young adults set in the early months of World War II told through the eyes of a teenage Nisei protagonist in Honolulu whose father and grandfather are both interned. The novel was made into a feature film in 2014. It was followed by a sequel, House of the Red Fish , in 2006.

The Art of Gaman: The Story Behind the Objects (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Will to survive
Widely available

A short documentary film created by Rick Quan in 2010 to accompany the traveling exhibition, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 which features arts and crafts created by Japanese American internees while living in World War II concentration camps. The film includes stories about the inmates who created the objects included in the exhibition, as told by their children and grandchildren. It also includes an interview with the exhibition's curator, Delphine Hirasuna, who describes The Art of Gaman' s purpose of celebrating the unique talents of these camp artists and helping people understand the larger story of the Japanese American mass confinement. The DVD release also includes Voices Long Silent , a 1980 short film by Bob Matsumoto, that was also shown in conjunction with The Art of Gaman exhibition.

An American Story: The History of California's Nisei Veterans (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
No availability

Short documentary on California's Nisei veterans produced by photographer Tom Graves. The video was funded by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

Ancestry is Not a Crime: The Internment of People of Japanese Descent During World War II (curricula)

Curricula
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12
Displacement, Evils of racism, Injustice, Patriotism - positive side or complications, Rights - individual or societal, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Limited availability

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II, the Hawai'i state legislature funded the development of Ancestry is Not a Crime , focused on the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. The 192-page curriculum aims to engage elementary through high school students with this complex history, to wrestle with the meaning of democratic principles, and to think critically about civil liberties and the responsibilities of a democratic citizenry.

Bat 6 (book)

Books
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8
Children's, Sports
Character - destruction, building up, Forgiveness
Widely available

Set in 1949, two small towns in Oregon are rivals in the girls' softball game of the year, Bat 6 (1998). On the Bear Creek Ridge team, Aki Mikami is the new girl is who has just returned after being "sent away to a camp" with her family since 1942. All the 6th grade girls were too young to remember Aki and her family leaving, and the adults would talk in whispers amongst themselves about what happened, but not to the children. Aki is shy but she is an amazing ball player (her mother was MVP for Bat 6 in 1930) and girls take to her immediately. The opposing Bat 6 team, Barlow, also recruits a talented new player named Shazam—a troubled girl who has come to live with her grandmother. She hates the Japanese because her father was killed in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The ballgame culminates in …

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 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.

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 …

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, …

California's Gold with Huell Howser: Manzanar (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Power of the past
Available

Episode 4012 of the California public television series features a visit to the Manzanar site with a group of former inmates. Host Huell Howser interviews activist Sue Kunitomi Embrey , who provides some background on Manzanar's history and points out the administration and inmate areas. Archie Miyatake talks about the photographs his father Toyo Miyatake took at Manzanar and displays the camera Toyo had made at Manzanar with a lens he had smuggled into the camp. The rest of the episode focuses on names carved into cement by inmate laborers, with three such laborers—Goro Kurihara, Jiro Matsuyama, and Gimp Izumi—brought back to the camp to see their handiwork for the first time in nearly sixty years.

California's Gold with Huell Howser: Songbird of Manzanar (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Reunion, Expression through art
Available

Episode 7003 of the long running California public television television series, California's Gold with Huell Howser . Filmed at the 2004 Manzanar Pilgrimage , this episode profiles two Nisei artists, painter Henry Fukuhara and singer Mary Nomura . Fukuhara is introduced by colleague Al Setton, and two of his paintings from the collection of the Japanese American National Museum are also highlighted. Fukuhara, who was just short of his ninety-first birthday at the time, is interviewed and is shown working on a painting. Nomura, the "Songbird of Manzanar," is interviewed about her singing exploits at Manzanar and is shown performing "The Manzanar Song" at the grand opening of the Manzanar Visitors Center.

Calling Tokyo: Japanese American Radio Broadcasters During World War II (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Documentary
Patriotism - complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Limited availability

Documentary film directed by Gary T. Ono that tells the story of a small group of Japanese Americans recruited out of the concentration camps to work for the British Political Warfare Mission (BPWM) and Office of War Information (OWI) as translators and broadcasters of propaganda aimed at Japan. The small group—eight who worked for the OWI and four for the BPWM—were mostly Kibei and worked out of a Denver studio. Both groups translated American news reports that were made into radio scripts and broadcasts transmitted by shortwave radio. The operation later moved to San Francisco in February 1945, when Japanese Americans were allowed to return to the West Coast.

Color of the Sea (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Young Adult, Historical Fiction
Coming of age, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

A coming-of-age novel by first time novelist John Hamamura centering on a Kibei raised in Japan, Hawai'i, and California and that climaxes with his wartime experiences that include arrest, the Military Intelligence Service , and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The book won an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association in 2007.

Something Strong Within (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Displacement, Will to survive
Available

Documentary film by pioneering director Robert A. Nakamura crafted out of amateur home movie footage shot in American concentration camps. Nakamura and producer/writer Karen L. Ishizuka produced Something Strong Within for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) as a companion piece to the exhibition America's Concentration Camps , curated by Ishizuka, which opened on November 11, 1994.

Coming Home: Memories of Japanese American Resettlement (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Displacement, Evils of racism
No availability

Exhibition organized by the Japanese American National Museum and curated by Darcie Iki and Jim Gatewood that explored the obstacles—such as housing and employment shortages and discrimination—that Japanese Americans faced after they left the confines of America's concentration camps. The exhibit opened on August 14, 1998, and ran until February 7, 1999. The exhibit explored the process of rebuilding community as well as the individual struggle to come to terms with the larger "camp" experience.

Canefields and Deserts: Japanese American Internment (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Evils of racism, Injustice
No availability

Early traveling exhibition assembled by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and displayed in venues in Honolulu and Denver, Colorado, in 1992. As part of the 50th anniversary commemoration of Executive Order 9066 , JANM put together Canefields and Deserts , which opened at the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu on July 10, 1992. Curated by Pam Funai, the exhibition included photographs of Hawai'i internment camps Sand Island and Honouliuli , letter and sketches by artist George Hoshida , and a large scale model of Manzanar made by Robert Hasuike. After its brief ten-day run in Honolulu, the exhibition traveled to Denver in August 1992.

Confined Citizens: The Amache-Granada Relocation Center, 1942-1945 (exhibition)

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

Section within the Colorado Stories exhibition, a permanent installation at the History Colorado Center in Denver that was part of its 2012 grand opening.

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