Browse > Theme > Immigrant experience

67 articles

1
2
3

Hawaii, End of the Rainbow (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Immigrant experience, Injustice, Will to survive, Working class struggles
Available

Kazuo Miyamoto (1897–1988) was a Nisei doctor and author who was interned at various incarceration camps for the duration of World War II as a result of the publication of his observations during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). During his incarceration at Sand Island , Miyamoto began writing Hawaii, End of the Rainbow , which took him seventeen years to complete. Although a fictional account of the experiences of Japanese immigrants spanning nearly seventy years from their arrival in the Islands to World War II, it provides key insights from a participant in these important events.

Fox Drum Bebop (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Power of words
Widely available

Novel by Gene Oishi that tells the saga of the Konos, a Japanese American farming family from coastal California, covering the years 1940 to 1982. Largely based on the author's own life and family, each chapter is a stand alone short story set in a particular time period. Early chapters covering the prewar years and the upheavals of World War II are told from the perspective of different family members, while later chapters covering the postwar years are largely through the perspective of Hiroshi, the character based on the author. Fox Drum Bebop was published by Kaya Press in 2014 and received the 2016 Association for Asian American Studies book award in the Creative Writing: Prose category.

Chrysanthemums and Salt (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Immigrant experience, Importance of community, Self-reliance
Available

Documentary film by Dianne Fukami on the Japanese American community in San Mateo, California, from its late 1800s origins to the outbreak of World War II. As hinted at by the film's title, Chrysanthemums and Salt largely focuses on two of the major industries that employed Japanese Americans before the war, growing and marketing chrysanthemums and salt companies that took advantage of the region's natural suitability for salt evaporation ponds. The film also covers Japanese American community life, the role of the churches and the outbreak of World War II and the reaction to the subsequent forced removal. Chrysanthemums and Salt is notable for including interviews with several Issei , conducted in Japanese with translated voiceovers. "Host" Jane Yanehiro narrates the film and also appears on camera.

Snow Falling on Cedars (book)

Books
Historical fiction
Coming of age, Convention and rebellion, Desire to escape, Displacement, Facing reality, Family - blessing or curse, Fear of other, Immigrant experience, Importance of community, individual versus society, Power of the past
Available

A World War II veteran reporting for his small town newspaper covers the trial of a local Japanese American man charged with murder while he struggles with his complicated feelings for the defendant's wife, his first love.

Strength and Diversity: Japanese American Women, 1885–1990 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Female roles, Immigrant experience, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Role of women
No availability

Pioneering traveling exhibition on the experiences of Japanese American women organized by the National Japanese American Historical Society and the Oakland Museum in 1990. Strength and Diversity went on to travel throughout the country as part of the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES) over the next decade plus.

Pride and Shame (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Immigrant experience, Evils of racism, Injustice
No availability

Early exhibition on the history of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest that was one of the first to highlight the wartime incarceration experience. After its 1970 debut at the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) in Seattle, Washington, a traveling version of Pride and Shame followed that toured numerous venues over the next five years. It was among several key exhibitions that reflected a growing consciousness about the incarceration from this time period.

Life behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Facing reality, Immigrant experience, Nationalism – complications, Role of men
Widely available

Internment memoir by Honolulu Issei publisher and community leader Yasutaro Soga . Originally published in 1948 as Tessaku seikatsu , it was translated into English by Kihei Hirai and a team of volunteers at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) and published by the University of Hawai'i Press in 2008.

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.

A Brother Is a Stranger (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Change versus tradition, Desire to escape, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Individual versus society, Nationalism – complications, Power of tradition
Available

Memoir of a young Japanese immigrant/refugee Christian about his upbringing and travails in Japan, his journey to the U.S. and his wartime internment, and his postwar observations in Japan. Published in 1946 by the John Day Company, it was among the first books by a Japanese American to appear after the war.

The Ito Sisters (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Role of women
No availability

Documentary on three Nisei sisters from Central California who lived to see their beiju (88th birthday) celebration, exploring their lives to the end of World War II.

Wataridori: Birds of Passage (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Immigrant experience, Wisdom of experience, Circle of life, Importance of community
Limited availability

Documentary film produced by Visual Communications in 1974 that tells the story of the Issei generation through the lives of three ordinary Issei.

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 …

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.

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 Issei Prisoners of the San Pedro Internment Center (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Immigrant experience, Injustice, Losing hope, Power and corruption, Will to survive
Available

Novel by Stanley N. Kanzaki about Issei internees at the fictional San Pedro Internment Camp in New Mexico.

The Japanese Lover (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Everlasting love, Evils of racism, Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience
Widely available

Novel by best-selling Chilean American novelist Isabel Allende, the title character of which is a Nisei man whose story of wartime incarceration is woven into the narrative.

Sylvia and Aki (book)

Books
Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
Grades 3-5
Historical Fiction, Children's
=Coming of age, Convention and rebellion, Evils of racism, Immigrant experience, Rights - individual or societal
Widely available

Chapter book for children by Winifred Conkling centering on the the Mendezes and the Munemitsus, the two families behind the landmark Mendez v. Westminster school desegregation case.

Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of Hawai'i Island (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
Widely available

Short film that tells the story of Japanese Americans on Big Island of Hawai'i who were interned during World War II using a combination of contemporary interviews, historical photographs and footage, and historical reenactments. It is one of a series of four films produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i about the internment experience in each of the four counties of Hawai'i as a follow up to the 2012 film The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i .

Voices Behind Barbed Wire: Stories of O'ahu (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
Widely available

Short film that tells the story of Japanese Americans on O'ahu who were interned during World War II using a combination of contemporary interviews, historical photographs and footage, and historical reenactments. It is one of a series of four films produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i about the internment experience in each of the four counties of Hawai'i as a follow up to the 2012 film The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i .

Voices Long Silent (film)

Films and Video
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Immigrant experience, Injustice, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Available

Documentary video that explores Issei perspectives of the wartime forced removal and incarceration, as related through voiceovers by actors from Los Angeles-based theater company, East West Players, accompanied by still photos of the incarceration. Filmmaker Bob Matsumoto was inspired by the testimony of Japanese Americans before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians , and sought to recapture the voices of those who were no longer able to tell their stories. Matsumoto updated the film twice, once after the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and once after the retroactive awarding of Congressional Medal of Honor awards to Japanese Americans who had been overlooked for the award in the 1940s. Voices Long Silent was used to accompany the exhibition The Art of Gaman and included in the DVD release of The Story Behind the Objects , a video specially produced by an about the show.

The Untold Story: Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Injustice, Quest for discovery, Immigrant experience
Widely available

Documentary film produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) in 2012 that provides an overview on the internment of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II—both those held in camps in the continental U.S. and those held in Hawai'i camps—as well as contemporary efforts to preserve the Hawai'i sites today.

Upon Their Shoulders (book)

Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Change versus tradition, Desire to escape, Disillusionment and dreams, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Limited availability

Novel centering on a Japanese American family in Hawai'i that may have been the first English-language published novel by a Japanese American about the Japanese American experience. Beginning with immigration and sugar plantations , the novel ends in the World War II era, addressing issues of internment, loyalty, and multiculturalism.

When Military Necessity Overrides Constitutional Guarantees: The Treatment of Japanese Americans During World War II (curricula)

Curricula
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Evils of racism, Immigrant experience, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
Widely available

This curriculum guide examines the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans through the lens of its constitutional merit. It should be noted that it was published in 1982, and it contains terminology that in 2017 is considered inappropriate and/or offensive in the use of "Oriental" versus Asian or Asian American. In addition, many of the suggested classroom materials are outmoded (filmstrips) or out of print and may be difficult to access. The guide refers to a "media kit" which may have been available when the guide was first published.

Woman from Hiroshima (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Immigrant experience, Motherhood, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Wisdom of experience
Available

Novel by Toshio Mori written in the first-person voice of an Issei woman telling her life story to two grandchildren shortly after World War II.

1
2
3