Browse > Interest Level > Grades 6-8

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Conversations: Before the War/After the War (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Injustice, Power of the past
Limited availability

A 1986 dramatic film by Robert Nakamura that is based on the play "Truth of the Matter" by Karen L. Ishizuka. In Conversations , three characters discuss their life experiences, feelings and the facts of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, exploring the changes in their lives and long term effects of their wartime experiences. Though taking the form of oral history interviews, the three characters were nonprofessional actors playing composite characters based on their own experiences and that of others. The cast included Kimiko Nakamura—the mother of director Nakamura—along with Warren Furutani , playing a role based on his father, and Grace Ino, playing the part of a younger Nisei . in a 2009 interview, Nakamra said that the film "was experimental in that we used the experiences of the non-actors themselves reading transcripts of interviews, and a little bit of coaching." [1]

House of the Red Fish (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 7-8
Historical Fiction, Young Adult
Coming of age, Empowerment, Good versus bad, Importance of community
Widely available

Young adult novel by Graham Salisbury about a Nisei teenager in wartime Honolulu who struggles to bring up the sunken fishing boat of his interned father. It is a sequel to the popular 1994 novel Under the Blood-Red Sun .

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8
Children's
Facing darkness, Forgiveness, Heroism – real and perceived, Will to survive
Widely available

Young adult novel by Graham Salisbury based on the wartime exploits of Richard Sakakida , a Nisei intelligence agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps who was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.

I'll Remember April (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Coming of age, Loss of innocence, Fear of other
Available

Dramatic film directed by Bob Clark and written by Mark Sanderson set in April 1942 about four young boys who discover a Japanese sailor. One of the boys is Japanese American, and he and his family also prepare for their imminent forced removal and incarceration. Pat Morita plays the boy's grandfather.

The Idaho Homefront: Of Camps and Combat (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Patriotism - positive side or complications
Widely available

Documentary video written and produced by Jim Peck for Idaho Public Television that tells the story of the Minidoka camp in Idaho and of Japanese Americans who served in World War II from Idaho, both those in Minidoka and those born and raised in Idaho. The show was a follow up to an earlier documentary by Peck titled The Idaho Homefront: World War II that had included a mention of Minidoka and of the 442nd . Narrated by Sue Galligan, and featuring interviews with Hero Shiosaki, Roy Gikui, Robert Sims, Bethine Church, Fumiko Hayashida, and Toshi Ito. Funding for the show came in part from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WETA Public Broadcasting, and from Wal-Mart. The half-hour show premiered on Idaho public television stations on September 20, 2007.

In Time of War (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Circle of life, Displacement, Injustice, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Widely available

Documentary film on the Japanese American experience in the Pacific Northwest including " voluntary evacuation ," forced removal and confinement, and the debate over military service. Produced by North By Northwest Entertainment for Whitworth College, the project was funded by a grant from the Washington Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

Interactions (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Power of the past
No availability

A 2000 film that chronicles the experiences of four high school students, who are given four days to find out about Japanese American teenagers in U.S. concentration camps during World War II. Equipped with a phone and a computer, Kiet, Christina, Miguel and Lluvia interview former inmates and visit the site of one of the camps, while contemplating the meaning of the wartime incarceration and its relevance to the present.

A Jive Bomber's Christmas (play)

Plays
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Musical
Importance of community, Optimism - power or folly
Widely available

Musical play set in a World War II concentration camp by Saachiko and Dom Magwili. First produced for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in 1994, A Jive Bomber's Christmas became a holiday tradition in Los Angeles, enjoying a nine-year run and subsequent revivals in Los Angeles and in Hawai'i. The play was based in part on Saachiko Magwili's childhood memories of Heart Mountain and shares a structural similarity with Dom Magwili's earlier Christmas in Camp , first produced at East West Players in 1981.

Justice Betrayed (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice
No availability

Documentary film on the internment of Japanese Americans from Hawai'i produced in 1992 by the Honolulu Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL). Justice Betrayed includes interviews with two Japanese Americans whose fathers were interned (Sandra Takahata, the daughter of artist George Hoshida , and Akira Otani, son of businessman Matsujiro Otani ); Tokushige and Mitsue Nakahara, boat builder brothers who were themselves interned; and Violet Ishii Hayashi, a woman from originally from Hawai'i who was on the West Coast at time of the mass expulsion and incarceration and ended up at Poston ; and legal scholar Eric Yamamoto and historian Franklin Odo. In addition to outlining the Hawai'i story, the film also covers Executive Order 9066 and the West Coast story as well as the issues with John DeWitt's Final Report that led to the corm nobis cases in the 1980s.

Kim/Kimi (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12
Grades 6-8
Children's, Young Adult
Coming of age, Identity crisis, Quest for discovery
Widely available

Kim/Kimi (1987) by Hadley Irwin explores one teen's quest to discover herself by finding out about her father's past. Kimi Yogushi, who is more commonly known as Kim Anderson, has an Irish American mother. Kim's father Kenji, who had died before she was born, was Japanese American. Sixteen-year-old Kim happily lives with her family in an all-white community in Iowa but she begins to want to know more about the Japanese American part of her identity. Her mother finally tells Kim that Kenji had been disowned by his family for marrying outside his race.

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.

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 …

Manzanar Fishing Club (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Desire to escape
Available

Feature length documentary film on Manzanar inmates who temporarily escaped from the confines of the camp to fish in the nearby streams and mountains. In addition to interviews with former inmate fishermen (and women) and archival images, The Manzanar Fishing Club also tells its story using animation and recreated scenes with actors. The film had a limited theatrical release in April 2012 and was released on DVD on October 30, 2012. It was funded in part by grants from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant program .

Medal of Honor (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived
Widely available

Short video on the twenty-one Japanese American recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor , produced by the Go For Broke National Education Center and that features footage from June 21, 2000 ceremony at which twenty of the medals were awarded.

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.

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story (film)

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

Documentary film by Eric Paul Fournier that chronicles the story of American civil rights hero, Fred Korematsu , whose refusal to obey orders prohibiting Japanese Americans from remaining on the West Coast led to a landmark Supreme Court case .

Nebraska's Nisei (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community
Available

Documentary film produced by the University of Nebraska that tells the story of three Nisei from Heart Mountain who left camp to attend the University of Nebraska through the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council during World War II. The three are Pat Sano, Marie Yamashita Snell, and Tom Shiokari. The story is told through interviews, historical photographs, and unidentified home movie type footage of Heart Mountain. No credits are listed for the production of the film. A nine minute version is available on the University of Nebraska's YouTube channel.

"Forty Years from Sand Island" (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Action, Crime
Greed as downfall, Power and corruption, Power of the past
Available

Episode of the Magnum P.I. television series that centers on a murder in the Sand Island Internment Camp in 1942. The episode from the popular series' third season first aired in 1983.

Passing Poston (film)

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

Documentary film that tells the story of Poston through the lives of four former inmates, Mary Higashi, Ruth Okimoto, Kiyo Sato, and Leon Uyeda. The four—who ranged in age from young adulthood to young childhood at the time of their incarceration—talk about their wartime experiences and also the continuing postwar impacts over footage of government propaganda films and archival and personal photographs.

A Personal Matter: Gordon Hirabayashi vs. the United States (film)

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

Documentary film on Gordon Hirabayashi and his legal challenge to the World War II-era measures against Japanese Americans during the war and the revival of that challenge forty years later. John de Graaf directed the 28-minute documentary, which tells his story in a largely chronological manner, ending with the 1980s coram nobis case verdict. In addition to Hirabayashi's own words and contemporary footage of him visiting such key locales as the Federal Court House in Seattle, where he was first tried; the King County Jail, where he was incarcerated; and his alma mater, Auburn High School, the filmmakers tell the story through interviews with two of his brothers, friends, and some of his lawyers (including Arthur Barnett , his friend and lawyer in the 1940s cases). A Personal Matter aired nationally on Public Broadcasting Service stations in 1992. Among the funders of the film are the National Commission on the …

Half Kenneth (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama, Short
Coming of age, Loss of innocence, Family - blessing or curse
Limited availability

Short dramatic film about two mixed race brothers at Manzanar in 1945. A 21-minute short, Half Kenneth was made by Ken Ochiai as a master's thesis film at the American Film Institute.

Harsh Canvas: The Art and Life of Henry Sugimoto (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Immigrant experience, Injustice
No availability

A 2001 biographical documentary film on the life and work of Issei artist Henry Sugimoto , based on the artist's memoirs and testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians . The film highlights Sugimoto's art through archival and contemporary footage and follows his life's journey from immigration to his incarceration with his family during World War II in Arkansas, and postwar relocation to New York. Actor Mako narrates the film in the voice of Sugimoto. Interviews with his daughter Madeleine Sugimoto and sister-in-law Naomi Tagawa provide additional information on his life, while fellow artist George Mukai and curators Kristine Kim and Stephanie Barron discuss the significance of his work.

Hito Hata: Raise the Banner (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Immigrant experience
Limited availability

Landmark feature film produced by Visual Communications (VC), a Los Angeles based non-profit in 1980. Centering on the life story of an Issei man, Hito Hata was likely the first dramatic feature film about Asian Americans by Asian Americans since the silent film era.

Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Displacement, Injustice, Evils of Racism
Limited availability

Exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art featuring work inspired by the wartime expulsion and incarceration by contemporary Japanese American artists, most of whom were too young to experience the concentration camps firsthand. Opening on May 10, 1992, Relocations and Revisions also included a program of videos and well as a catalog with both print and video components.

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]

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