Browse > Theme > Wisdom of experience

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Roar of Silence (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Communication—verbal and nonverbal, Power of silence, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

While watching a young boy play in a puddle, an elderly Nisei recalls his Issei father. Forced to start over again in his sixties in Chicago after having lost his farm during the mass roundup and incarceration, he also found his role as family leader usurped by his eldest son, who had been a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Despite these setbacks, the narrator recalls the lessons his father had silently transmitted to him.

Lessons in Loyalty: One American's Internment Camp Experience (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Documentary film that profiles Masaji "Mas" Inoshita, a Nisei who was forcibly removed and incarcerated with his family at the Gila River , Arizona, camp during World War II and who subsequently served with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Lessons in Loyalty is built around interviews with Inoshita and also includes scenes of him visiting the Gila River site and speaking to a class about his experiences. Karen Leong, a professor at Arizona State University, provides the historical context. The film was produced by Ray Gonzales for the City of Chandler, Arizona in 2007.

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.

Kintsukuroi (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama, History
Family – blessing or curse, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Available

Feature-length family saga centering on a Japanese American family's wartime incarceration odyssey.

Six Weddings and a Dress (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Short documentary film centering on Chiyomi Ogawa, a Nisei woman who had been incarcerated in Manzanar , and her wedding dress, which was subsequently used by five other women in the early postwar years.

Yuki Shimoda: Asian American Actor (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Quest for discovery, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Documentary film profiling pioneering Nisei actor Yuki Shimoda that takes us from his youth in Sacramento, wartime incarceration as a young man at Tule Lake , and the ups and downs of his acting career. The film includes interviews with many of Shimoda's friends and contemporaries including Mako , Nobu McCarthy , and Soon Teck Oh, along with clips from key roles in Auntie Mame , Farewell to Manzanar , and Hito Hata among others. The film places his career in the larger context of Asian American actors who struggle to find meaningful parts and often are forced to play stereotypical roles to make ends meet.

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 Remembered Days (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Motherhood, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

A grandmother tells her grandchildren about her exclusion and confinement. Told in the first person voice of the grandmother, the story is divided into three sections: (1) recalling the train ride from Tanforan to Topaz ; (2) a rumination of the absurdity of the camp being dubbed the "Jewel of the Desert"; and (3) her remembrances of hearing of her son Yoshio's death while serving with the 442nd .

Take What You Can Carry (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
Young Adult
Coming of age, Individual versus society, Vulnerability of the strong, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

The lives of two older teen boys, Kyle and Ken, alternate stories in the graphic novel Take What You Can Carry (2012) by Kevin C. Pyle. Although experienced a generation apart, the stories of these two teens merge into a complete story of healing and redemption.

Unexpected Journeys: Remarkable Stories of Japanese in America (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Widely available

Documentary film consisting of short profiles of Japanese Americans whose "surprising stories" were shaped by World War II in unusual ways. The segments include

When Rabbit Left the Moon (film)

Films and Video
Widely available
Documentary
Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Available

Video essay by Emiko Omori on the 75th anniversary of Executive Order 9066 that traces the story of the wartime forced removal and incarceration through moving and still images and spare original music by Janice Giteck and Todd Boekelheide. The film begins with images of the Issei period, moving on to images of the incarceration, and to various aspect of life in the concentration camps beginning with happier scenes before turning to harsher ones, including images of post-segregation Tule Lake and documents describing shooting victims at Manzanar and draft resistance . The film moves on to images connected to Nisei soldiers in camp and on the battlefield before ending with camp cemeteries and images of the sites today. The title refers to a Japanese proverb and also to Omori's 1999 documentary, Rabbit in the Moon .

Who's Going to Pay for These Donuts, Anyway? (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Family – blessing or curse, Power of the past, Wisdom of experience
Available

Experimental documentary film by Janice Tanaka that centers on her finding and reuniting with a father and an uncle—one diagnosed as mentally ill and the other conventionally successful—neither of whom she had seen since childhood.

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.

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 .

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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