Browse > Theme > Progress – real or illusion
9 articles
Dusty Exile: Looking Back at Japanese Relocation during World War II (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Evils of racism, Role of women, Progress – real or illusion
- Available
Memoir of the forced removal and incarceration and its aftermath by a sympathetic white schoolteacher at Poston .
Home of the Brave (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Children's
- Injustice, Knowledge versus ignorance, Power of the past, Progress – real or illusion
- Widely available
Children's picture book by Allen Say inspired by the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Reluctant Samurai: Memoirs of an Urban Planner (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Family – blessing or curse, Fulfillment, Importance of community, Progress – real or illusion
- Limited availability
Memoir by a Nisei man that recounts his agricultural upbringing, his time in American concentration camps, and his postwar career as an urban planner who was a key figure in the redevelopment of downtown Los Angeles.
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 …
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.
The Black Dress (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Companionship as salvation, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Progress – real or illusion
- Limited availability
Short story about a young woman who has recently left Heart Mountain to resettle in New York City in 1945. Invited to a party by co-workers at a silk screen shop, she decides to buy a new dress for the party. At the department store, she impulsively asks the friendly young female sales clerks to join her for dinner that night. Though she immediately regrets asking, the evening leads to an unexpected revelation.
Japanese American Journey: The Story of a People (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- History, Children's
- Empowerment, Fulfillment, Heartbreak of betrayal, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Progress – real or illusion
- Available
Overview work for children on the Japanese American experience produced by the Japanese American Curriculum Project (JACP) in 1985. Consisting of a historical overview, eleven biographies of notable Japanese Americans, and three short stories, Japanese American Journey was adapted from a 1970 JACP publication titled Japanese Americans: The Untold Story .
Japanese Americans Struggle for Equality (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12
- Grades 9-12
- Children's, History
- Immigrant experience, Injustice, Progress – real or illusion, Social mobility
- Limited availability
Early overview book for young readers on the Japanese American experience framed through a lens of discrimination and the responses to it. Issued as part of a "Discrimination" series on various ethnic groups by Rourke Corporation (now Rourke Educational Media), it was published in 1992.
Nihonjin Face (play)
- Plays
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Circle of life, Evils of racism, Progress – real or illusion, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short play for school audiences by Janet Hayakawa and Tere Martínez that juxtaposes the Japanese American incarceration with the Civil Rights Movement and anti-immigrant sentiment in the present.