Browse > Place > United States

54 articles

1
2
3

Discoveries... America National Parks: Japanese American Incarceration, 1942-1945 (film)

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

Installment of the popular video series America National Parks produced by Bennett-Watt HD Productions that provides an overview of the Japanese American wartime incarceration and looks at contemporary efforts by the National Park Service and state and local organizations to preserve the former camp sites. In his review in Video Librarian , T. Keogh wrote, "Full of personal testimonies, this eye-opening travelogue is highly recommended." [1]

Enemy Alien (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Dangers of ignorance, Fear of other
Widely available

Documentary film by Konrad Aderer on the post-9/11 arrest of Farouk Abel-Muhti, a New York based human right activist, and his two year odyssey of imprisonment, protest, and mistreatment. The case inspires Aderer, a Yonsei , to explore his family's World War II incarceration for the first time, journeying to Cleveland to interview his grandmother, Toyo Takayama, who had gotten married in Tanforan and bore his mother in Topaz . The making of the film as well as Aderer's personal transformation in becoming active in Abel-Muhti's case become part of the story told in the film.

Forgotten Valor (film)

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

Dramatic film about a 442nd Regimental Combat Team veteran who was among those awarded the Medal of Honor in 2000, but who refuses to attend the ceremony and subsequently disappears.

Going for Broke (film)

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

Documentary film that provides an overview of Japanese Americans who served in the 100th Infantry Battalion , 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during World War II using archival footage, interviews, and contemporary footage of key wartime locations. The film also includes information on the history of Japanese Americans before the war and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and is narrated by George Takei and "hosted" by Daniel Inouye . Going for Broke was produced in 2005 by the Go For Broke Educational Foundation, with funding from Farmers' Insurance. The film's tagline is "They Believed in America, When America No Longer Believed in Them."

Going for Honor, Going for Broke (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
Limited availability

Short 2006 documentary film that gives an overview of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Produced, written, directed, narrated & edited by George Toshio Johnston, he film was funded by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

The 442nd: Duty, Honor and Loyalty (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
Limited availability

Documentary film on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . The 442nd: Duty, Honor & Loyalty is a English language version of a 1996 Japanese language documentary produced by Bungei Shunju, Ltd. titled Amerika Dai-442 Hohei Rentai: Nikkei Niseitachi no Dainijin Seikai Taisen . The English language script was by John Dobovan, who also narrated.

442: Live with Honor, Die with Dignity (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Evils of racism
Limited availability

A 2010 documentary film directed by Japanese filmmaker Junichiro Suzuki that tells the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and other Japanese Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. It is the second film in Suzuki's trilogy of films on the Japanese American World War II experience.

American at Heart (film)

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

Film that tells the story of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team through historical footage (including clips from the movie Go for Broke! ), still photographs and interview with many Nisei veterans, their white commanders, and others tied to the story. American at Heart covers the origin of the units in Hawai'i and Washington, DC, basic training in Camps McCoy and Shelby, their experiences in combat in Europe, and their return to the Hawai'i and the continental U.S. after the war. The film also contrasts the experience of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i vs. those on the West Coast, outlining the mass forced removal and incarceration of the latter. Among those interviewed are General Mark Clark , the World War II commander of the Fifth Army and 15th Army Group in Europe, who discusses what he calls "the wrong decision" to send Japanese Americans to "concentration camps" and …

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]

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).

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).

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.

Asian Americans, Episode 2: A Question of Loyalty (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heartbreak of betrayal, Nationalism – complications, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

The second of five episodes of a landmark documentary on the Asian American experience, A Question of Loyalty focuses on the World War II period, telling the story of three Asian American families, two of which are Japanese American.

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 …

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.

The Silent Glory (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
Limited availability

Documentary film on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Relying on archival and newsreel footage along with interviews, The Silent Glory begins with the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and the subsequent mass forced removal of West Coast Japanese Americans, continuing with the struggle to restore eligibility to military service for Japanese Americans and the military history of the 442nd, and climaxing with the rescue of the Lost Battalion and the movement to award Congressional Medals of Honor many years later. Among those interviewed are George Katagiri, Kennie Namba, George Oiye , and Al Ouchi, along with Martin Higgins, one of the commanders of the "Lost Battalion." Producer and director Zed Merrill specializes in making films about relatively little known aspects of World War II.

The Color of Honor: The Japanese American Soldier in WWII (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Patriotism - positive side or complications
Available

A 1987 documentary film by Loni Ding that largely focuses on Japanese Americans who served in the Military Intelligence Service (MIS) during World War II. A sequel to Ding's 1983 film Nisei Soldier: Standard Bearer for an Exiled People , the two films were among the first and most influential films on the Nisei soldiers and both were critically acclaimed and widely viewed.

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.

Honor and Sacrifice: The Roy Matsumoto Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real or perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Available

A 2013 documentary film about Japanese American Kibei war hero Roy Matsumoto and his family during World War II, as told through the eyes of his daughter Karen. A decorated linguist with the Military Intelligence Service who was a part of Merrill's Marauders, an American guerrilla unit in Burma, Matsumoto served even though his parents and sisters were living in Hiroshima and three of his Nisei brothers were ultimately conscripted into the Japanese army.

Honor Bound: A Personal Journey (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real or perceived, Power of the past
Available

Documentary film that tells the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team through the story of one soldier, Haruo Howard "Howe" Hanamura, and his daughter, television reporter Wendy Hanamura, who travel to Europe in October 1944 for 50th anniversary ceremonies of the liberation of Bruyeres and Biffontaine by the 442nd. The film was produced by the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS) and KPIX, San Francisco, where Wendy Hanamura was a news reporter. After debuting on KPIX on March 5, 1995, it went on to be shown on over 100 PBS stations.

Hyakunen no monogatari (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Love and sacrifice, Role of women
Available

Japanese television drama—whose English title is 100 Years —that follows the fortunes of four generations of women over the course of the twentieth century. The three-part drama first aired in Japan on TBS on August 28 to 30, 2000, and was subsequently shown on Japanese language TV stations in the United States. The first segment begins in 1920 and ends in the late 1930s, the second begins in 1949 and covers the early postwar years, and the third takes place in 2000. Each segment stars Nanako Matsushima, who plays Aya Togura, born in 1901 in the first segment, her daughter in the second, and her great-granddaughter in the third. The second segment includes two major Japanese American characters, both of whom were incarcerated in American concentration camps.

Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Immigrant experience
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans during World War II at the National Museum of Japanese History in Chiba, Japan. Displayed from March 16, 2010, to April 3, 2011, Japanese Immigrants in the United States and the War Era commemorated the opening of the approximately 7,500 square foot Sixth Exhibition Gallery (which displays contemporary history) at the National Museum of Japanese History (hereafter Rekihaku). [1] The special exhibition was the first at a Japanese national institution to focus on Japanese Americans, attempting to bring them into the mainstream of Japanese history.

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.

1
2
3