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685 articles
Alice and the Bear (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Companionship as salvation, Desire to escape, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Power of the past
- Widely available
Short story by Kiyoshi Parker about an old woman whose trip to a Little Tokyo store with her great-granddaughter brings back memories of her camp experience. Alice Miyamoto visits Little Tokyo in Los Angeles for the first time in thirty years with her family. After lunch, her daughter suggests they go visit the Go For Broke Monument . But on the way, her four-year-old great-granddaughter drags her into a store and picks up a stuffed Totoro toy. Alice is immediately reminded of a stuffed bear she had as a child of about the same age that was her constant companion when she was in an unspecified concentration camp.
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.
After the Bloom (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Family – blessing or curse, Power of silence, Power of the past, Role of women
- Widely available
Novel by Japanese Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara about the sudden disappearance of a Nisei woman in Toronto and her Sansei daughter's search for her and her own past.
A Teacher's Resource for Farewell to Manzanar (curricula)
- Curricula
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-9, Grades 9-12
- Coming of age, Displacement, Evils of racism, Family - blessing or curse, Growing up - pain or pleasure, Identity crisis, Injustice
- Widely available
This study guide developed in 1999 by Facing History and Ourselves with Voices of Love and Freedom is part of the "Witness to History" series that examines a literary work confronting the complexity of history particularly around issues of prejudice and discrimination. It is based on the 1973 edition of Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston. In this memoir, Wakatsuki Houston traces her family experiences during World War II, when because of their Japanese ancestry, they are incarcerated at Manzanar, a concentration camp in the California desert.
A Thousand Paper Cranes: How Denver's Japanese American Community Emerged from Internment (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Importance of community, Power of the past, Rebirth
- Widely available
Documentary film about the wartime incarceration and about Japanese Americans in Denver after the war. Scenes shot at the Amache site today serve as a backdrop for the incarceration stories, while the segments on Denver focus on the importance of Colorado Governor Ralph Carr and on Sakura Square, the symbolic center of Colorado's Japanese American community.
A Tradition of Honor (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Heroism – real and perceived, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Feature length documentary telling the stories of Japanese American soldiers in the 100th Infantry Battalion , 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and Military Intelligence Service , produced in 2002 by the Go For Broke National Education Foundation.
All We Could Carry (film)
- Films and Video
Short documentary film by Steven Okazaki on Heart Mountain that serves as the introductory video to the exhibits at the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center . The fifteen minute film draws on interviews with twelve former Heart Mountain inmates and features photographs by Yoshio Okumoto and Bill Manbo, 8-mm home movie footage by Naokichi Hashizume and Eiichi Edward Sakauye, and drawings by Estelle Ishigo , all of whom where were also incarcerated there. The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation commissioned and funded the film. It premiered at the grand opening of the interpretive center on August 20, 2011.
Allegiance (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction, Mystery
- Emptiness of attaining a false dream, Facing darkness, Injustice, Loss of innocence, Power and corruption
- Widely available
Historical mystery novel by Kermit Roosevelt set during World War II against the backdrop of the Supreme Court and the Japanese American cases.
Am I a Traitor? (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Facing reality, Nationalism – complications, Patriotism – positive side or complications
- Available
Essay by Issei socialist journalist Shigeki Oka (1878–1959) focusing on his decision to aid the Allies and oppose the Japanese militarist regime during World War II. Oka begins by describing the situation prior to the war, where Japanese American leaders dismissed the possibility of war between the U.S. and Japan. While preparing a translation of Hitler's anti-Japanese writings to be distributed in Japan, the attack on Pearl Harbor occurs. Oka sends a telegram to President Roosevelt offering his services and expresses the desire that Japan lose the war as quickly as possible so that its militarist regime would be brought down; these actions lead to members of the Japanese American community branding him a traitor. He later volunteers to go to India despite his advanced age to write and distribute propaganda for the U.S. After the war, the Japanese community continues to shun him despite the fact that the events …
Sayonara Slam (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction, Mystery
- Power of silence, Power of the past, Family – blessing or curse
- Widely available
The sixth book in Naomi Hirahara's Mas Arai Mysteries series finds the Kibei gardener caught up in unraveling the mysterious death of a Japanese journalist covering the World Baseball Classic in Los Angeles. As in the other books in the series, Mas's Hiroshima hibakusha past and the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans play key roles in the plot.
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).
Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Biography, Memoir
- Displacement, Immigrant Experience
- Widely available
Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps relays the life story of Seiichi Higashide (1909–97). The book was translated from Japanese into English and Spanish through the efforts of his eight children, and was first published in 1993 by E&E Kudo. A second edition of the book was published in 2000 by the University of Washington Press, with a new foreword by C. Harvey Gardiner, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University and author of Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States ; a new epilogue by Julie Small, co-chair of Campaign for Justice-Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans; and, a new preface by Elsa H. Kudo, the author's eldest daughter.
American Dreams (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Historical Fiction, Children's
- Evils of racism, Coming of age, Injustice, Growing up – pain or pleasure
- Available
Chapter book for children about two eleven-year-old girls in Hollywood, one white and one Japanese American, in the weeks just before and just after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Sakai Family of Bainbridge Island (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Necessity of work, Reunion, Role of women
- Limited availability
Documentary film on the Sakai family, longtime residents of Bainbridge Island, Washington , based primarily on an interview with Kazuko "Kay" Sakei Nakao.
An Abandoned Pot of Rice (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Displacement, Immigrant experience, Importance of community, Progress – real or illusion
- No availability
Short essay by Hisaye Yamamoto DeSoto about the Kumamoto-mura community near Oceanside, California, where her family lived just prior to World War II. The pleasant reminiscences of life there are tempered by recollections of the chaos after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The title of the story comes from the narrator's recollection of making a pot of rice intending to make rice balls on the day of their forced departure, but forgetting about it, leaving the full pot behind. Years later, she returns to the site of the community, which subsequently became a large military base which for a time housed tens of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees. Noting the similarities with the concentration camps she and her family were in, she observes that this group was the third group of Asians to …
Act of Faith: The Rev. Emery Andrews Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Heroism – real and perceived, Love and sacrifice
- Widely available
Documentary film on Rev. Emery Andrews , a Baptist priest who went beyond the call of duty to aid Japanese Americans from Seattle incarcerated at the Minidoka , Idaho, concentration camp.
Through the Lens of Russell Lee: Mathias Uchiyama's Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Working class struggles, Displacement
- Widely available
Short documentary film about a Japanese American family that left the Portland Assembly Center to engage in farm labor in eastern Oregon, produced to accompany the traveling exhibition Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II .
Time of Decay (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Desire to escape, Family—blessing or curse, Loneliness as destructive force, Losing hope
- Widely available
Short story by Ferris Takahashi of an Issei woman whose family puts her in a cold nursing home against her will at the end of her life. Told from the perspective of the woman, she recalls her forced removal and incarceration in unspecified concentration camps and other episodes in her life.
Time of Fear (film)
- Films and Video
Documentary film that provides an overview of the Japanese American World War II incarceration experience with a focus on the two camps in Arkansas, Jerome and Rohwer . The film was commissioned as part of the Life Interrupted project of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the Japanese American National Museum and was produced by Ambrica Productions with Sue Williams writing and directing it. The primary funders of the film included the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation, the Arkansas Natural and Cultural Resources Council, the Arkansas Humanities Council, and the Department of Arkansas Heritage. The hour long film made its national PBS debut in May of 2005.
A Time Remembered: The Terminal Island Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Importance of community, Immigrant experience, Injustice
- Limited availability
Documentary film on the Japanese American community on Terminal Island , a fishing village of the Southern California coast that was the first such community to excluded en masse in February 1942.
To Be Takei (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Empowerment, Everlasting love, Injustice, Optimism – power or folly, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Documentary film that profiles actor George Takei and his husband and manager Brad Takei, capturing both their pasts and their daily lives today.
The Day After Today (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Facing reality, Losing hope
- Widely available
Very short story by Toshio Mori (called "A Sketch") about an Issei man at Topaz who worries about what will happen to him and his wife when they are forced to leave the camp, since they have no children to help support them. He envies neighbors who have resettled children they can stay with in the Midwest and East. Published in the Pacific Citizen in February of 1945, the story captured the anxiety many Japanese Americans felt with news that the concentration camps would be closing by the end of the year.
The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Non Fiction
- Chaos and order, Displacement, Family - blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Inner versus outer strength, Motherhood, Self-awareness
- Available
Translation of the wartime diary of Hatsuye Egami, who carefully describes her experiences and observations while incarcerated at Tulare Assembly Center during World War II.
The Experience of Japanese Americans in the United States: A Teacher Resource Manual (curricula)
- Curricula
- Pre-K, Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Immigrant experience, Injustice, Knowledge versus ignorance, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Patriotism - positive side or complications, Rights - individual or societal, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
The Advisory Council to the Ethnic Heritage Project of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) developed, printed and distributed this manual in 1975. It was one of the first efforts to provide K–12 instructional materials about the history and achievements of Japanese Americans in the United States. The aim of the manual was to counter existing teaching materials which contained information that "portray(ed) persons of Japanese ancestry in a distorted or stereotypic fashion" (page 6). In addition, the authors sought to see Japanese Americans represented in the educational system's instructional framework of cultural pluralism.
The Flower Girls (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Heartbreak of betrayal, Loss of innocence, Optimism – power or folly, Progress – real or illusion
- Available
Short story by Lawson Fusao Inada . Two girls named Cherry and Rose—dubbed the "flower girls" by their teacher—become best friends as first and second graders in Portland, Oregon, just prior to World War II. They play at each other's houses after school and explore each other's neighborhood, though both agree that Cherry's—the Japantown area known as Shita Machi—is more interesting. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drives a wedge between them, and Cherry and her family are soon sent away. While the girls exchange a few letters, they soon lose touch. Switching to the present, the narrator writes about a new Cherry and Rose, who meet to play in the Japanese garden of a Portland park.