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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.

An American Story: World War II Stories of the Tragedy and Triumph of Our Japanese-American Community During Wartime (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Importance of community
Widely available

Video on the World War II odyssey of Japanese Americans from the Watsonville area based on interviews with survivors of that time. The video was part of a larger project that also included a curriculum guide/lesson plan kit for teachers and an interactive video kiosk available for display by community organizations. The project was sponsored by the Watsonville Public Library and Watsonville-Santa Cruz chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League and funded by a $14,000 grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program . The film's premiere screening took place on August 27, 2011. [1]

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.

Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Displacement, Importance of community, Role of religion - value or hypocrisy
Available

Memoir of a young Issei Episcopal clergyman based in Washington state during the trying years of World War II. Published in the fall of 1967, Daisuke Kitagawa 's account was among the first book-length first-person accounts of the Japanese American incarceration.

Chicago Goes to War, 1941-1945 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Importance of community
No availability

1992–93 exhibition at the Chicago Historical Society on the impact of World War II on Chicago. Among the topics covered in the exhibition is the resettlement in the Chicago area of Japanese Americans from wartime concentration camps. It was one of several major local exhibitions that appeared around the 50th anniversary of World War II and that included aspects of the local Japanese American story.

... I Told You So (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Importance of community, Power of words
Widely available

Early documentary film produced by the Asian American arts organization Visual Communications that profiles the Sansei poet Lawson Fusao Inada . Shot in black and white, the film follows Inada through the streets of Fresno where he recites poetry from his 1971 book Before the War: poems as they happened over music by June and Dan Kuramoto, visiting friends and the family fish market. Later, he is shown working with other Asian American writers/editors on a new literary anthology (that will be published as Aiiieeeee!: An Anthology of Asian American Writers ), at work teaching at Southern Oregon University and walking among the ruins at the Tule Lake site. Between the poetry, Inada talks about his upbringing in Fresno where he related more to Chicano and African American classmates than to Japanese Americans, his family background, and the impact of wartime incarceration. No director, producer or writer is listed in …

The Ties That Bind: Generations of Faith (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
Available

Documentary film about this history of the Buena Vista United Methodist Church , a Japanese American church in Alameda, California , on its 100th anniversary. Using family photographs, home movies and other sources, the film takes us through the church's history in ten and twenty year intervals, highlighting its founding and early growth through the Issei era, the impact of wartime incarceration, and its evolution in the postwar period.

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.

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 …

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 Legacy of Heart Mountain (film)

Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Will to survive
Widely available

Documentary that explores various human interest stories centered on the Heart Mountain , Wyoming, concentration camp. Produced and written by KABC-TV (Los Angeles) news anchorman David Ono and documentary filmmaker Jeff MacIntyre, The Legacy of Heart Mountain aired on local and national television and won three local area Emmy Awards.

Uncle Yozo (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Disillusionment and dreams, Importance of community, Optimism – power or folly
No availability

Comical story by Ted Tajima about an Issei man at an unspecified concentration camp who enlivens the first Christmas in camp by elaborately playing Santa. A regular contributor of stories to the Rafu Shimpo holiday edition, Tajima taught at Alhambra High for 35 years and led their acclaimed journalism program.

To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek's Mr. Sulu (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Family - blessing or curse, Growing up - pain or pleasure, Identity crisis, Importance of community, Love and sacrifice
Widely available

Famous actor and celebrity recounts some of the most important periods of his life, including his early childhood spent at Rohwer and Tule Lake concentration camps.

Tule Lake (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Individual versus society
Available

Novel by Edward Miyakawa set in the eponymous concentration camp. Tule Lake was likely the first novel by a Japanese American set in one of the World War II concentration camps to be published when it first appeared in 1979. It was also notable for its unflinching portrayal of life in the most repressive of the camps.

We Are Not Free (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Children's, Historical Fiction
Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Facing darkness, Importance of community
Widely available

Young adult novel by Traci Chee that tells the wartime incarceration story through the eyes of a group of teenage friends from San Francisco.

We the People: A Story of Internment in America (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Patriotism – positive side or complications, Role of women
Available

Memoir of Florin, California-based Nisei educator and activist Mary Tsukamoto co-authored by Elizabeth Pinkerton and published in 1987 when Tsukamoto was seventy-two. Though the book covers her entire life, well over half of it focuses on her and her family's wartime confinement, their resettlement in the Midwest, and eventual return to California.

What the Scarecrow Said (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Importance of community
Facing darkness, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
Widely available

Novel set in the last months of World War II whose protagonist is a middle-aged Nisei widower who resettles in a small New England town.

Yuri Kochiyama: Passion for Justice (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Convention and rebellion, Evils of racism, Empowerment, Importance of community, Working class struggles
Available

Documentary film profiling Nisei political activist Yuri Kochiyama co-produced and co-directed by Patricia Saunders and Rea Tajiri.

Bearing the Unbearable (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Evils of racism, Importance of community, Power of the past
Widely available

Documentary film on the incarceration of Japanese Americans from Bainbridge Island, Washington , produced for the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial by North Shore Productions.

Betrayed: Surviving an American Concentration Camp (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Evils of racism, Importance of community, Power of the past
Widely available

Hour-long documentary on the Minidoka , Idaho, concentration camp adapted from the half-hour version used as the orientation film at the Minidoka National Historic Site. Betrayed aired nationally on public television stations in April 2022.

Birth of an Activist: The Sox Kitashima Story (book)

Books
Memoir
Coming of age, Death - inevitable or tragedy, Empowerment, Importance of community
Available

A renowned redress activist shares her life story, including how the humiliating experience of wartime incarceration helped shape her later involvement in political activism.

Suitcase Sefton and the American Dream (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Everlasting love, Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Injustice
Widely available

Novel by Jay Feldman about a New York Yankees scout who discovers a hot Nisei pitching prospect in an American concentration camp during World War II.

Comforting the Afflicted (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
No availability

Moderated panel discussion led by Phil Shigekuni with four prominent Japanese American Protestant ministers with ties to Los Angeles who were incarcerated during World War II. Three—Rev. Paul Nagano , Rev. John Miyabe, and Bishop Roy Sano—were at the Poston , Arizona, concentration camp, while Rev. Sam Tonomura was a boy in British Columbia caught up in the forced removal of Japanese Canadians during the war. The discussion covers the men's experiences during the war and the role of the church during the incarceration, particularly with regard to issues of "loyalty" and resistance. The men talk about the role of the church in the Redress Movement , in bridging divides in the Japanese American community today, and in the anti-Muslim/Arab climate following the 9/11 attacks. The format of the film largely follows that of a "talking heads" type television program, with the insertion of still historical photographs.

Honoring Alameda's Japanese American History (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Importance of community, Immigrant experience, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
Limited availability

Conventional documentary on the history of the Japanese American community in Alameda, California, that is more or less equally divided between the prewar years and wartime incarceration/aftermath. Perhaps due to sponsorship by the Buddhist Temple of Alameda and the Buena Vista United Methodist Church, there is a focus on the history and activities of those two institutions throughout. While the first half is specifically on the Japanese American community in Alameda and is thus somewhat unique, the section on the wartime removal and incarceration is more general and thus repeats information that can be found elsewhere.

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