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From a Different Shore: An American Identity (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Change versus tradition, Importance of community, Power of the past, Reunion
- Limited availability
Documentary film produced by Great Britain's The Open University that examines the Japanese American community by focusing on three families in Los Angeles.
From a Silk Cocoon (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Individual versus society, Injustice, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Documentary film recounting the wartime story of a Kibei couple, Itaru and Shizuko Ina and their two young children as reconstructed by their daughter Satsuki Ina. Ina and co-directors Emery Clay III and Stephen Holsapple tell the story largely through the couple's own words in the form of Shizuko's diary and letters to each other when they become separated in the course of their incarceration.
Gila River (play)
- Plays
Play by Lane Nishikawa, set in the Gila River , Arizona, concentration camp, that tells the story of the Wakabayashi family. Told in a flashback after Nisei daughter Mitsue revisits the site in 1972, the play incorporates the arrest and internment of the Issei patriarch, the military service (in the Military Intelligence Service ) of a baseball loving son, and relationships with Native Americans on whose land the camp had been built. The play premiered in 1999 at the Gila River Arts and Crafts Center and has been subsequently performed at the World Theater at California State University at Monterey Bay and the Japan America Theatre in Los Angeles.
Gila River and Mama: The Ruth Mix Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Loss of innocence, Power of the past
- Available
Documentary film that tells the story of the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans through the eyes of Ruth Mix, who as a fifteen year old, accompanied her mother Frida, a teacher, to Gila River and lived among the inmates. Filmmaker Claire Mix is the daughter of Ruth.
Give Us This Day (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Patriotism—positive side or complications, Progress—real or illusion
- Widely available
Short story by Henry H. Ebihara that presents a hopeful portrait of an Issei couple a year after resettlement . Mr. Sakamoto returns on a winter night from his night shift job at a factory to find his wife waiting for him with a hot meal. They discuss their good fortune, their son in the Military Intelligence Service in Burma, and their leaving the concentration camp with their children a year earlier.
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 .
Forsaken Fields (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Displacement, Necessity of work, Working class struggles
- Limited availability
Documentary film on the impact of wartime incarceration on Japanese American farming in California.
Ganbatte: Sixty-year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (book)
- Books
- Memoir
- Capitalism - effect on the individual, Convention and rebellion, Empowerment, Important of community, Injustice, Rights - individual and societal, Self-awareness, Working class struggles
- Available
Kibei - Nisei labor organizer and communist shares his life story, including his unique experiences during World War II as the husband of a white woman with a mixed-race child incarcerated while he served with the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific Theater.
Garden of Stones (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Role of women, Motherhood, Temporary nature of physical beauty, Power of the past, Facing darkness
- Widely available
Popular novel by Sophie Littlefield centering on three generations of Japanese American women whose lives are dramatically shaped by the wartime incarceration of the elder two at Manzanar .
Gardens of Hope (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Companionship as salvation, Everlasting love, Evils of racism, Loss of innocence, Self-awareness
- Widely available
Novel about the short but life changing romance between a young white man and a Nisei man during World War II. The story begins in 2004, as the elderly Jack Henry asks his nephew to drive him to the Manzanar National Historic Site. On the way, he tells the nephew the story of his connection to the place. As the story begins in Los Angeles the fall of 1942, Jack seems to have everything: a loving family, a smart and attractive fiancée, and good prospects for a career as a teacher. However as a closeted gay man, he is confused and unhappy. Drawn to Pershing Park downtown, he has a series of furtive sexual encounters with other men before meeting Hiro, a handsome young Nisei. Their affair is immediately different and deeper than the others. When the outbreak of war separates them, Jack impulsively decides to become a teacher at …
Gasa Gasa Girl Goes to Camp (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir, Art
- Coming of age, Expression through art, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Immigrant experience, Oppression of women
- Widely available
Concentration camp memoir by a Nisei artist. Ten years old at the time of the wartime incarceration, Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey was sent to Santa Anita Assembly Center and Amache with her older brother and Issei parents. Evolving from captions that accompanied displays of the author's postwar paintings, Gasa Gasa Girl intersperses stories of life in the camps with recollections of happier days with her parents, brother, and aunts in Hollywood, California, before the war. The book is illustrated by twenty-eight color reproductions of her watercolor paintings that depict both her external and internal lives during the war, as well as a like number of family photographs, archival photographs, and photographs of key objects mentioned in the text. Published by the University of Utah Press, the book includes an foreword by historian Cherstin Lyon.
Gasa-Gasa Girl (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction, Mystery
- Family – blessing or curse, Greed as downfall, Power of the past
- Widely available
The second mystery novel in Naomi Hirahara's "Mas Arai Mysteries" series, Gasa-Gasa Girl finds the Kibei crime solver in New York where he reconciles with his estranged daughter and unravels the mysterious death of a wealthy Nisei businessman.
The Gate of Heaven (play)
- Plays
Play by Lane Nishikawa and Victor Talmadge about the lifelong friendship between a Nisei who helped liberate a Nazi death camp as a member of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion and a Holocaust survivor. The main characters, Kiyoshi "Sam" Yamamoto and Leon Ehrlich, are based on the lives of the playwrights' fathers. The play begins in April 1945 and follows the two men over the course of their lives. It was first produced at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego on March 5, 1996. Nishikawa adapted the play into a short dramatic film titled When We Were Warriors, Part I , which he directed and starred in alongside Talmadge.
Fumiko Hayashida: The Woman Behind the Symbol (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Injustice, Role of women, Power of the past
- Available
A 2009 short documentary film about Fumiko Hayashida, a pregnant mother of two who was one of 227 members of the Bainbridge Island Japanese American community who were forced from their homes in March 1942. Hayashida—or at least her image—became immortalized in a photograph taken of her holding her young daughter. First appearing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , the photograph became one of the iconic images of the roundup. Providing both a biographical portrait of Hayashida and telling the larger story of Bainbridge Island, the film also shows the then 97-year-old Hayashida revisiting the site of the former Minidoka concentration camp in Idaho.
Gambling Den (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Disillusionment and dreams, Immigrant experience, Loss of innocence, Role of women, Temptation and destruction
- No availability
Short story by Akemi Kikumura about a Japanese American family in Lodi, California, on the eve of World War II. Told in the first person voice of fifteen-year-old Peggy Tanaka, the story begins with the Tanaka family's fateful purchase of a restaurant in 1941. The restaurant soon becomes a success as migrant workers are drawn to both Mrs. Tanaka's cooking and the beauty of Ann, Peggy's eighteen-year-old sister. Mr. Tanaka's decision to open a gambling den in back further adds to profits, despite Mrs. Tanaka's disapproval and the necessary kick-backs to a corrupt local policeman. But the Tanakas' lives are soon to be complicated by Ann's romance with a young man of burakumin (Japanese outcaste) origin, a conniving neighbor, and the impending roundup of Japanese Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Ganbare Don't Give Up! (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Immigrant experience, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Rights - individual or societal, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- No availability
Documentary film that provides an overview of what happened to Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II, focusing on the limited internment of Issei community leaders and the exploits of Japanese American men in the armed forces. Ganbare Don't Give Up! was produced as a part of the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i's core exhibition, Okage Sama De: I am what I am because of you , which remains the only place where it can be viewed.
Gold Watch (play)
- Plays
A 1972 play by Momoko Iko that was one of the first to take up the wartime mass removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
Good Luck Soup (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Coming of age, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Importance of community, Individual versus society, Power of tradition
- Widely available
Autobiographical documentary film by Matthew Hashiguchi that explores his and his family's experience growing up as mixed-race Japanese Americans in Cleveland, Ohio. Hashiguchi draws inspiration from his Nisei grandmother and family matriarch Eva Hashiguchi, who settled in Cleveland after leaving the Jerome , Arkansas, concentration camp during World War II and chose to remain there. In addition to the feature length film, the Good Luck Soup project also includes an interactive website that serves as an "participatory storytelling" platform.
From Bullets to Ballots (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Quest for power, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Working class struggles
- Widely available
Documentary film on Japanese Americans from Hawai'i as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and their role in the political realignment of Hawai'i after the war. From Bullets to Ballots was one of three short films directed by Robert A. Nakamura and produced by Karen L. Ishizuka in conjunction with From Bento to Mixed Plate: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Multicultural Hawai'i, an exhibition produced by the Japanese American National Museum in 1997.
From Hawaii to the Holocaust: A Shared Moment in History (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Facing darkness, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Documentary film on the men of the 522nd Field Artillery Battalion and their encounter with Jewish victims of the Nazi death camps at the end of World War II. The 1993 film was a production of the Hawaii Holocaust Project.
Four-Four-Two (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8
- Historical fiction
- Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Displacement, Forgiveness, Identity crisis
- Available
A popular and confident Nisei boy and his best friend enlist in the all-Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team and are thrown into the horrific reality of combat in Europe.
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.
Fred Korematsu Speaks Up (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Children's, History
- Heroism – real and perceived, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Book for middle school audiences on Fred Korematsu , who challenged the forced removal of Japanese Americans during World War II.