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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.

A Place to Belong (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Grades 7-8
Children's, Historical Fiction
Coming of age, Facing darkness, Family – blessing or curse, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Loss of innocence, Will to survive
Widely available

Young adult novel by Cynthia Kadohata that tells the story of a Japanese American family's experience in postwar Japan from the perspective of an adolescent female protagonist.

Citizen 13660 (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir, Graphic Novels
Displacement, Evils of racism, Expression through art, Will to survive
Widely available

Published in 1946 as the last camps were being shuttered, Nisei artist Miné Okubo 's illustrated eponymous memoir, Citizen 13660 , has the distinction of being the earliest, first-person, book-length account of the American concentration camp experience. Always a vigorous booster of her own work, Okubo promoted the book that came to define her career as "the first and only documentary story of the Japanese evacuation and relocation written and illustrated by one who was there." [1] All told, Okubo produced an estimated 2,000 portraits of camp life in a range of styles and materials, including ink, charcoal, and gouache, while imprisoned at the Tanforan temporary detention camp in California and the Topaz concentration camp in Utah. Okubo's voluminous output notwithstanding, it was primarily Citizen 13660' s roughly 200 line-drawings that established her standing as a major chronicler of and historic witness to the camp experience.

Sowing Seeds of Life… of Hope (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Empowerment, Optimism – power or folly, Will to survive
Widely available

Short film about Kumezo Hachimonji, an Issei seed store owner from El Monte, California, who brought seeds with him to Heart Mountain that were used to grow vegetables there. The film is based on an interview with Ike Hachimonji, Kumezo's Nisei son. The short film by Michi Tanioka came out Visual Communications ' Digital Histories program, a program to encourage older Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adults to tell stories through film.

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 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.

The Red Kimono (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Coming of age, Evils of racism, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Will to survive
Widely available

Novel that tells parallel stories of a Japanese American family that is uprooted from their Berkeley, California, home and sent to American concentration camps during World War II, and a young African American man who goes to prison for the beating death of that family's patriarch.

Tsuru (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Desire to escape, Evils of racism, Individual versus society, Will to survive
Widely available

Short dramatic film about an elderly Issei couple whose attempt to avoid the mass roundup of Japanese Americans during World War II is aided by a white nurse. Tsuru was a senior year project at Chapman University by Chris K. T. Bright.

When Your Body Has Been Rolled in Thorns (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Evils of racism, Facing reality, Loss of innocence, Will to survive
Widely available

Short story by Ferris Takahashi about a Japanese American family leaving a concentration camp to return to their old home in Los Angeles. Told from the perspective of a college educated Nisei husband and father of two young children, the story begins as they gather up their possessions and prepare to leave the camp. Yosh, a friend who had returned earlier and was able to reestablish his business, greets them at the train station. When they return to their home, they find it trashed and vandalized, with all the furniture gone. They also learn that the Buddhist temple in which they had stored other possessions had burned down. Yosh and his family offer to put them up until they can fix their house. Returning to look more closely at the house after dinner, the man and his Issei mother find racist graffiti. His mother assures him that they will rebound.

White Road of Thorns: Journalist's Diary—Trials and Tribulations of the Japanese American Internment During World War II (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Facing darkness, Will to survive
Available

Wartime diary of Issei journalist and Japanese language school teacher Hisa Aoki that covers the period prior to her return to Japan on the second voyage of the Gripsholm . Originally published in Japan in 1953, it was translated into English by Archie Miyamoto at the behest of Aoki's elder daughter, Mary Yoko Nakamura.

Barbed Wire Baseball (book)

Books
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Children's
Empowerment, Individual versus society, Will to survive
Widely available

Children's picture book by Marissa Moss with illustrations by Yuko Shimizu that focuses on the true story of Kenichi Zenimura , an Issei baseball pioneer who builds a baseball field in the Gila River concentration camp.

The Art of Gaman: The Story Behind the Objects (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Will to survive
Widely available

A short documentary film created by Rick Quan in 2010 to accompany the traveling exhibition, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 which features arts and crafts created by Japanese American internees while living in World War II concentration camps. The film includes stories about the inmates who created the objects included in the exhibition, as told by their children and grandchildren. It also includes an interview with the exhibition's curator, Delphine Hirasuna, who describes The Art of Gaman' s purpose of celebrating the unique talents of these camp artists and helping people understand the larger story of the Japanese American mass confinement. The DVD release also includes Voices Long Silent , a 1980 short film by Bob Matsumoto, that was also shown in conjunction with The Art of Gaman exhibition.

An Internment Odyssey: Haisho Tenten (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Immigrant experience, Nationalism – complications, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Will to survive
Widely available

An Internment Odyssey: Haisho Tenten is the third book in a series published by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i and University of Hawai'i Press of a Hawai'i inmate's account of their incarceration experience during World War II. It represents a critical addition to Japanese American history as it provides the perspective of an Issei from Hawai'i who authorities incarcerated at multiple sites in the Islands and the mainland. The author, Kumaji Furuya , thus gives voice to some of the experiences faced by the 1,320 inmates from Hawai'i who like Furuya were often separated from their families for the duration of the war.

And Then a Rainbow (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Evils of racism, Role of women, Will to survive, Working class struggles
Limited availability

Memoir by a Nisei woman who renounces her citizenship at Tule Lake and lives in Japan for thirteen years before returning to the U.S.

China Dolls (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Companionship as salvation, Empowerment, Female roles, Forgiveness, Heartbreak of betrayal, Will to survive
Widely available

Historical novel by Lisa See centering on performers at Chinese themed nightclubs in San Francisco and New York in the 1930s and 1940s. One of the three main characters is a Japanese American woman passing as Chinese American.

Chikara!: A Sweeping Novel of Japan and America From 1907 to 1983 (book)

Books
Historical Fiction
Change versus tradition, Coming of age, Death - inevitable or tragedy, Disillusionment and dreams, Displacement, Emptiness of attaining a false dream, Evils of racism, Facing reality, Family - blessing or curse, Forgiveness, Greed as downfall, Fate and free will, Heartbreak of betrayal, Heroism - real and perceived, Immigrant experience, Individual versus society, Inner versus outer strength, Lost honor, Lost love, Nationalism - complications, Patriotism - positive side or complications, Power of the past, Will to survive
Available

This work of historical fiction traces the tumultuous rise and fall of the Hoshi family, whose scion, Sataro, takes his wife Itoko and eldest son Noboru to California in 1907 to seek his fortune and restore his family's honor. He leaves his second son Hiroshi behind with family, a decision that marks the inauspicious first step of the tragic transpacific drama that unfolds over the course of the novel.

Something Strong Within (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Displacement, Will to survive
Available

Documentary film by pioneering director Robert A. Nakamura crafted out of amateur home movie footage shot in American concentration camps. Nakamura and producer/writer Karen L. Ishizuka produced Something Strong Within for the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) as a companion piece to the exhibition America's Concentration Camps , curated by Ishizuka, which opened on November 11, 1994.

Silent Honor (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Romance
Coming of age, Companionship as salvation, Everlasting love, Evils of racism, Loss of innocence, Will to survive
Widely available

Novel by bestselling author Danielle Steel about a Japanese American family in the San Francisco Bay Area and their wartime odyssey in American concentration camps, highlighting a romance between a niece recently arrived from Japan and a white college professor.

The Cat Who Chose to Dream (book)

Books
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Children's
Disillusionment and dreams, Facing darkness, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Will to survive
Widely available

Children's picture book about a cat who accompanies his Japanese American family to an American concentration camp during World War II.

Hunt for the Bamboo Rat (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8
Children's
Facing darkness, Forgiveness, Heroism – real and perceived, Will to survive
Widely available

Young adult novel by Graham Salisbury based on the wartime exploits of Richard Sakakida , a Nisei intelligence agent in the Counter Intelligence Corps who was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines.

Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple (book)

Books
Non Fiction
Displacement, Facing darkness, Facing reality, Immigrant experience, Isolation, Will to survive
Available

An intimate history of one Issei couple's experience of World War II, including transcriptions of the letters they sent each other when they were incarcerated apart.

Japanese American Detention Camps: Stories of Strength and Hope (play)

Plays
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Quest for discovery, Power of the past, Evils of racism, Will to survive
Limited availability

Storytelling performance by Megumi in which she tells stories of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans from the perspective of various characters. Based on interviews with Japanese American former inmates, she has been performing Japanese American Detention Camps since 1997.

Kai's Mother (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Immigrant experience, Motherhood, Will to survive, Wisdom of experience
Available

Short story by Gretel Ehrlich told in the first person voice of an Issei woman as she rides the train back to California from Heart Mountain at war's end. The characters in the story were introduced in Ehrlich's earlier novel Heart Mountain .

Letters from the 442nd: The World War II Correspondence of a Japanese American Medic (book)

Books
Historical Nonfiction
Communication - verbal and nonverbal, Companionship as salvation, Death - inevitable or tragedy, Displacement, Facing reality, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Will to survive
Available

Letters sent by a medic in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team serving in Europe to his wife incarcerated at Minidoka concentration camp during World War II.

Looking After Minidoka: An American Memoir (book)

Books
Memoir
Change versus tradition, Coming of age, Displacement, Female roles, Growing up - pain or pleasure, Immigrant experience, Love and sacrifice, Overcoming - fear, weakness, vice, Power of tradition, Will to survive
Available

A third-generation Japanese American shares the multi-generational story of both sides of his family, from immigration to the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and wartime incarceration, to resettlement and his own childhood.

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