Browse > Theme > Wisdom of experience
34 articles
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American in Disguise (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Identity crisis, Wisdom of experience
- Available
American in Disguise is Daniel Okimoto's account of his search for identity in America and Japan. The book was originally published in 1971 by John Weatherhill, Inc, with a foreword by James Michener.
American (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Drama, War
- Heroism – real and perceived, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short narrative film starring George Takei as a Nisei veteran and Japanese American National Museum docent named Clinton Nakamoto. While on duty one day at the museum, he meets a woman with a young daughter and starts to give them a tour. The woman mentions that her grandfather had fought in the "422" and shows Clinton a picture of him on her phone. The picture sends Clinton back to the 1942, recalling his anger at the forced removal and later of serving in the 442nd with the grandfather, who was killed in the rescue of the Lost Battalion . He takes her to visit the Go for Broke memorial, where they find his name on it. On the way home on the bus, he strikes up a friendship with a young Muslim boy.
An American Story: Norman Mineta and His Legacy (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Biography, History
- Empowerment, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Quest for power, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Documentary film that profiles Nisei politician Norman Mineta with a particular focus on his childhood years in an American concentration camp and his role forty years later in the Redress movement .
Both Alike in Dignity (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Evils of racism, Reunion, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short story by Chester Sakamoto about an elderly Holocaust survivor who mistakenly gets off the bus in Little Tokyo , where he meets an elderly Nisei man. One Sunday, on his weekly visit to a friend in Pasadena, Mr. Muncznik gets off the bus too early and ends up in Little Tokyo. Sitting to get his bearings, he finds himself next to a statue of a Japanese man. Friendly Mr. Sata stops and explains that it is a statue of Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who risked his career and safety to help thousands of Jews escape Lithuania during the war. Conversation ensues about each man's wartime experience—Mr. Sata had lived in Little Tokyo before the war and had been sent with his family to Heart Mountain —revealing a startling coincidence.
Changing Season: On the Masumoto Family Farm (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Circle of life, Family – blessing or curse, Man against nature, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Documentary film that follows a Japanese American farm family over the course of a year at their Central California farm.
Children of the Camps (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Power of words, Self-awareness, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Documentary film that explores the long term impact of the wartime incarceration on those who were children at the time. Much of the film documents a three-day workshop that brings together former child inmates for co-counseling sessions in which they discuss often repressed memories of the incarceration and its aftermath.
Dandelion Through the Crack/Kiyo's Story (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Female roles, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Memoir by a Nisei woman of farm life in Sacramento, her family's wartime incarceration, and their struggles to reestablish their lives after the war.
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.
Homecoming (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Love and sacrifice, Motherhood, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short story by Toshio Mori about an Issei woman's first visit with her son Mamoru after he has been severely wounded in combat as a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . "Homecoming" takes the form of a story told in the woman's first person voice to her grandchildren. It is one of several stories by Mori featuring the same woman published in the Pacific Citizen between 1949 and 1952 that later became the basis of his novel Woman from Hiroshima , published in 1978. The first half of the story is about her efforts to see her son after being allowed to leave Topaz to return to the West Coast . She is at first dismayed to learn that he has been moved to a military hospital in Auburn, California, known to be a hotbed of anti-Japanese racism. Arriving in Auburn, they see numerous anti-Japanese signs and are …
Instructions to All Persons: Reflections on Executive Order 9066 (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- History
- Evils of racism, Injustice, Power of the past, Rebirth, Wisdom of experience
- No availability
Exhibition mounted by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) to commemorate the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 .
Invisible Citizens: Japanese Americans (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Early documentary film that highlights the experiences of Japanese Americans during and after World War II through profiles of six Japanese Americans from around the country.
Issei: The First Generation (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Role of women, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Documentary film featuring interviews with Issei who speak in Japanese about their lives. Filmed in 1983 and shown on television in the San Francisco Bay area in 1984, the film remained largely unseen for the next thirty years until it was restored and reissued in 2013. It remains one of the only films to feature Issei voices on the wartime removal and incarceration and on Japanese American history in general.
Join Me in Laughter (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Motherhood, Optimism—power of folly, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
A grandmother tells her grandchildren about the meaning of life, while recalling episodes related to her confinement and return from Topaz . Apparently the same character as in the story " The Remembered Days ," published a year earlier, she recalls her adult children leaving Topaz behind to move on with their lives, acts of both prejudice and kindness upon her return to California, and the end of the war, while encouraging an optimistic attitude towards life.
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 .
Kubota (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Power of silence, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Short story/essay centering on the author's maternal grandfather, whom everyone called by his last name, Kubota. A Kibei from Hawai'i, Kubota had graduated high school in Hiroshima before returning to become a successful shopkeeper and community leader—as well as an avid fisherman—on Ō'ahu's North Shore prior to the war. Arrested by the FBI on the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kubota was one of the relatively fortunate ones, having been taken to Honolulu for questioning, but released after just a few days. Years later, Kubota lives with the author's family in Gardena, California, and repeatedly tells the teenager his World War II story, urging him not to forget it and to be his chronicler. The author is puzzled to find that other Japanese Americans not only didn't care to hear this story but were very reluctant to talk about their wartime exclusion and incarceration. After his grandfather's death, …
The Legacy of a Cemetery (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Reunion, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
First person reflections on a trip back to his hometown of Los Angeles by a man who had settled in New Jersey after leaving the Jerome , Arkansas, concentration camps some thirty years earlier. A visit to Evergreen Cemetery east of downtown Los Angeles brings back memories of his forced removal in 1942, remembrances of Nisei soldiers he knew who are buried there, and memories of his deceased family members.
The Man with the Bulging Pockets (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Fulfillment, Greed as downfall, Optimism – power or folly, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Short story by Toshio Mori centering on an old man at Tanforan who becomes enormously popular with children by passing out a seemingly limitless supply of candy to them on his daily walks around the camp. His actions and popularity inspire jealousy in another old man, who also begins passing out candy, while spreading bad stories about the first old man. The story originally appeared in the 1944 holiday edition of The Pacific Citizen and was republished in Mori's 1979 short story collection The Chauvinist and Other Stories and in slightly different from, as a part of his 1978 novel Woman from Hiroshima .
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.
9066 to 9/11: America’s Concentration Camps Then… and Now? (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Dangers of ignorance, Evils of racism, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
A 2004 documentary film directed by Akira Boch that looks at the World War II expulsion of Japanese Americans into American concentration camps through the contemporary lens of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Immediately following the attacks, there was an instant public backlash against Arab Americans and Muslims. As the United States government fought a "war on terrorism" with no end in sight, its tactics and policies were noticeably reminiscent of the rhetoric and immediate steps taken that led to the mass incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II. The film draws comparisons between the Japanese and Muslim American experiences, provoking questions about immigration, patriotism, equality and the civil rights and liberties of all American citizens, especially during times of national emergency.
The Old Man on Crutches (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Companionship as salvation, Power of words, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Short story by Setsuko Nagata about the title character whom the narrator meets while serving as a waitress at a Tanforan Assembly Center mess hall. The man, named Mr. Mine, takes a liking to the narrator and shares Chinese poetry with her. When they move to the Topaz , Utah, concentration camp, he visits her on occasion, but when he requests repatriation, he moves to Tule Lake . The narrator hears that he eventually did return to his native Kumamoto, Japan.
Seed: The Life of the Rice King and His Kin (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Circle of life, Immigrant experience, Individual versus society, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Wisdom of experience
- Widely available
Japanese produced documentary film on Issei rice farming pioneer Keisaburo Koda and the family business he founded in Dos Palos, California.
Shirley Temple, Hotcha-cha (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Displacement, Heartbreak of betrayal, Isolation, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Short story by Wakako Yamauchi about a Nisei strandee couple and their difficulties both in wartime Japan and in the resettlement era U.S. Told in the first-person voice of Mie, the story begins in 1939 when Mie is seventeen. As was the case for a sizable minority of Nisei youth, she had been sent to Japan for her education, having arrived there three years prior. She attends a boarding school and spends holidays with the Kodamas, a wealthy childless couple who are family friends. On a holiday, she meets Jobo Endo, a fellow Nisei, who is in Japan attending college. Courtship ensues. Recognizing the difficulties they would face in Japan as the war heats up, Jobo suggests that Mie ask the Kodamas for money to return to the U.S. However, the Kodamas had hoped to marry off Mie to a grand nephew. Though they consent to Jobo and Mie getting …
Sincerely, Miné Okubo (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Expression through art, Quest for discovery, Wisdom of experience
- Available
Biographical film on artist Miné Okubo produced for the exhibition Miné Okubo's Masterpiece: The Art of Citizen 13660 at the Japanese American National Museum (August 28, 2021 to March 27, 2022). Director Yuka Murakami provides an overview of Okubo's life and art, drawing on family members, friends and scholars, and uses archival photographs and footage along with two prior interviews with Okubo. Given the exhibition's focus on her wartime incarceration, the film provides a broader view of her life and work, especially the evolution of her postwar art and her postwar life in New York City.
Snapshot, 1944 (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Power of silence, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
- Limited availability
Short story by David Mas Masumoto told in the first person voice of a Sansei young adult reflecting on the meaning of an old snapshot of his father's family taken at Gila River in 1944. The occasion is the funeral of his Uncle George, killed as an American soldier in the war . In the photo, the narrator's grandfather holds a flag and his grandmother holds a picture of George, while his father and aunts and uncles stand uneasily to the side. The narrator writes in turn about the postwar fates of his grandfather, who died before he was born; his grandmother, who lives with the family, but suffers from dementia; and his father, who struggled to buy a farm after the war and now grows raisins and other crops on eighty acres. Each in his her own way remains as silent to the narrator as in the photograph.
Swimming in the American: A Memoir and Selected Writings (book)
- Books
- Adult
- Adult
- Memoir, Poetry
- Coming of age, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Wisdom of experience, Working class struggles
- Widely available
Memoir by Nisei playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi (1922–2019) told in short prose vignettes, poetry and a play.
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