Browse > Theme > Expression through art
60 articles
For Joy (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, Biography, Music
- Expression through art, Optimism – power or folly, Power of the past
- Widely available
Short film that documents a visit by the contemporary musical duo No-No Boy—Julian Saporiti and Erin Aoyama—to Honolulu to see Joy Takeshita Teraoka, a singer with the George Igawa Orchestra at Heart Mountain . Invited by the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans Club in 2018 to do a concert in Honolulu, the duo used it as an opportunity to meet Teraoka. At her Honolulu apartment, Teraoka talks about her time as a singer in Heart Mountain as a teenager and other aspects of camp life, including youth culture, Japanese cultural practices, and the general musical scene while singing old song with Aoyama. The film concludes with No-No Boy's concert, highlighted by a song Saporiti wrote for Teraoka titled "The Best God Damn Band in Wyoming" and by Teraoka joining them onstage.
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.
Great Grandfather's Drum (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Importance of community, Power of the past, Power of tradition
- Available
Documentary film that tells the story of Japanese Americans in Maui through the story of Maui Taiko and its founder, Kay Fukumoto.
Designing the Path: Japanese American Architect, Gyo Obata (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, Biography
- Circle of life, Expression through art, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Japanese-produced documentary film profiling Nisei architect Gyo Obata.
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).
A Place Where Sunflowers Grow (book)
- Books
- Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
- Grades 1-2
- Children's, Historical Fiction
- Darkness and light, Empowerment, Expression through art, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Widely available
Children's picture book by Amy Lee-Tai and illustrated by Felicia Hoshino about Mari, a young Japanese American girl in Topaz , an American concentration camp during World War II. As the book begins, she plants sunflower seeds in the desert soil, hoping they will grow like the sunflowers in their old backyard. She recalls their prewar home, where she lived with her older brother and artist parents. At Topaz, she goes with her father to the art school he started. Initially unable to draw anything in the children's class, she slowly starts to find things to draw with the help of a supportive teacher, her father, and her new friend Aiko. After drawing a picture of her barrack with the sunflowers growing tall in front, she returns home to find little sunflower seedlings, giving her hope for the future. A final page provides biographies of the author and illustrator and …
Crafting History: Arts and Crafts from America's Concentration Camps (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Art, History
- Expression through art, Desire to escape
- Limited availability
2002 exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Crafting History highlighted some 400 objects from JANM's collection made by Japanese Americans held in American concentration camps during World War II, ranging from a five foot tall Buddhist altar carved in Heart Mountain to bird pins, clothing and other textiles, and furniture. Curated by Kristine Kim, the exhibition opened on November 16, 2002. A full slate of public programs took place during the six-month run of the exhibition, including many crafting workshops. Craft items from the camps were also the subject of The Art of Gaman , a lavishly illustrated book published in 2005 and an exhibition that traveled around the country and in Japan starting in 2010.
Days of Waiting (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, love and sacrifice, injustice
- Limited availability
An award-winning 1990 documentary film by Steven Okazaki about the life and work of artist Estelle Peck Ishigo , a Caucasian woman who voluntarily entered the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming during World War II with her Japanese American husband. The film won an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1991 and The George Foster Peabody Award.
Hidden Legacy: Japanese Traditional Performing Arts in the WWII Internment Camps (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Destruction of beauty, Expression through art, Power of tradition
- Widely available
Documentary film focusing on traditional Japanese performing arts in War Relocation Authority concentration camps during World War II.
Lawson Fusao Inada: What It Means to Be Free (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Importance of community, Power of words
- Limited availability
Documentary film featuring poet Lawson Fusao Inada . In the film, Inada reads ten of his poems, while also providing brief introductions or background information on each of them. The filmmakers incorporate archival and contemporary footage—including visits by Inada to Tule Lake , the site of the Fresno Assembly Center , and Japanese American Historical Plaza in Portland, Oregon—as well as archival and family photographs into the readings.