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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.

Farewell to Manzanar (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Coming of age, Displacement, Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Working class struggles
Widely available

Popular memoir that tells the story of one family's forced removal and confinement at Manzanar through the eyes of a young girl. First published in 1973, Farewell to Manzanar has sold over one million copies and is one of the most widely read accounts of Japanese American incarceration and its aftermath.

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.

One Fighting Irishman: Wayne M. Collins and the Tule Lake Segregation Center (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Working class struggles
Widely available

Documentary film profiling lawyer Wayne M. Collins that focuses on his years-long work to nullify the renunciations of thousands of Tule Lake inmates in the years after World War II. Built around a colorfully profane audio of a 1970s interview with Collins by historian Donald Collins (no relation), the film explores Collins' troubled early life, the broader Tule Lake Segregation Center story, and the wide ranging impact Collins' actions had on generations of Tule Lake families, including that of narrator George Takei.

Through the Lens of Russell Lee: Mathias Uchiyama's Story (film)

Films and Video
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Power of the past, Working class struggles, Displacement
Widely available

Short documentary film about a Japanese American family that left the Portland Assembly Center to engage in farm labor in eastern Oregon, produced to accompany the traveling exhibition Uprooted: Japanese American Farm Labor Camps during World War II .

Yukiko and Carlos (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Everlasting love, Family – blessing or curse, Power of tradition, Working class struggles, Youth and beauty
Widely available

Love story by Rubén "Funkahuatl" Guevara about a Chicano young man and a Nisei young woman that begins in 1941. Written in the first person voice of Carlos Gutiérrez, the story begins when he spots Yukiko Nakamura dancing at a bon dance while he is walking home from work. At Roosevelt High School, he approaches her, and they become friends, with each learning about the other's culture. Carlos aspires to be a boxing champion and is estranged from his alcoholic father. He soon becomes a regular at Yukiko's family's restaurant and begins taking lessons in the martial arts from Yukiko's father, eventually winning his respect and the right to date Yukiko. But the coming of war and the forced removal of Japanese Americans separate the couple, as Yukiko and her family are sent to Manzanar . Carlos eventually becomes a war hero by applying the lessons he learned from Mr. …

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.

An American Christmas (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Motherhood, Working class struggles
Available

Short story by Alice Nash centering on an elderly Issei woman in contemporary New York. As she struggles to carry a bag of rice home to her apartment, she reflects on her arrival in New York with her late husband after leaving the concentration camp and the kind Yamaguchi family who put them up while refusing to take money from them. They eventually opened a cleaning shop that helped pay for their only son's college education. A successful businessman in California, the son takes her on a trip every year, but largely keeps her away from her grandchildren due to his white wife's discomfort with her. When she gets back to her apartment, the family of the building's supervisor, the Gonzalez family, invites her to their home to help decorate their Christmas tree.

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.

Biography Hawai'i: Koji Ariyoshi (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, Biography
Working class struggles, Change versus tradition, Convention and rebellion
Widely available

Documentary film that profiles journalist, labor leader, and former Manzanar inmate Koji Ariyoshi . Produced as part of the Biography Hawai'i series, it aired on public television stations in Hawai'i in May 2005.

Child Prisoner in American Concentration Camps (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 7-8
Memoir
Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Immigrant experience, Working class struggles
Available

Memoir of a childhood spent in American concentration camps by a Nisei educator and activist from Seattle.

The Summer of '43 (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Evils of racism, Individual versus society, Working class struggles
Limited availability

Short story centering on Akira Koyama, a Nisei man who has left an unspecified concentration camp to attend college in Utah. There, he stubbornly tries to find a summer job in the face of rampant discrimination. After being turned down for a draftsman position because of his ancestry, he visits a laundry owned by an acquaintance's family in search of other leads. Meanwhile, Dale, a white navy veteran and one of his college roommates, suffers from stomach pains that resemble appendicitis. Akira accompanies him to the hospital and waits as Dale has successful surgery. After a conversation with the doctor, Akira is offered a job at the hospital.

The Caretaker (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Female roles, Isolation, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short film about Josey Gerrish, a migrant from Fiji, who serves as the caretaker for 95 year old Haru Tsurumoto in Sonoma County, California. Told through Josey's first-person narrative, we learn that she had hoped to be doctor or nurse, but, like many Fijian woman, had to leave her own family behind to become a caretaker in the U.S. She finds herself immediately drawn to Haru, with the women linked by their outsider status. During World War II, Haru had been among those Japanese Americans forcibly removed and held in concentration camps. In the U.S. without papers, Joesy worries about getting stopped by police and deported.

Las Vegas Charley (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Disillusionment and dreams, Temptation and destruction, Vulnerability of the meek, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Hisaye Yamamoto about an Issei man named Kazuyuki Matsumoto, who works as a dishwasher at a Las Vegas restaurant while gambling away his wages. In flashback, we learn of his life story: boyhood in Kumamoto prefecture, then migration to the U.S. where he becomes a successful farmer in Santa Maria, California, and is soon joined by a "picture bride" wife, Haru and two sons. But Haru's death in childbirth after the birth of their second son changes Kazuyuki's life decisively. He sends the two boys to live with his mother in Japan and becomes a migrant laborer. At first, he sends regular remittances home, but he soon picks up a gambling habit and the payments gradually come to an end. He later brings his Kibei sons back to the U.S., where they start a new farming venture in Orange County, California, this one less successful. Then comes …

Mackerel Sky (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Immigrant experience, Will to survive, Working class struggles
No availability

Short story by Jeff Matsuda in which a young Sansei man recalls various stories about his Issei grandfather: visiting him and his grandmother when he was a child; recreating the old man talking about his youth in Japan and his early years as a laborer in the U.S.; and visiting him with his mother when he was in college, and his grandfather was a nearly deaf old man. In the process, the narrator recalls his grandfather's internment: as a fisherman on Terminal Island , he was arrested a week after Pearl Harbor and sent to Bismarck and then to an unspecified camp in New Mexico, while the rest of his immediate family spent the war years in Japan.

Masao and the Bronze Nightingale (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Expression through art, Lost love, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Rubén "Funkahuatl" Guevara about a Nisei zoot suiter and saxophone player in East Los Angeles before and after World War II. Masao Matsui and his buddies Lil' Joe Casillas and Isamu Imoto grow up in Boyle Heights playing jazz and dressing in elaborate zoot suits prior to the war. Masao dreams of leading a band one day. His dreams are interrupted by World War II and his forced incarceration at Manzanar. He passes time playing jazz records and plays in the Jive Bombers in camp. After the war, he returns to Little Tokyo and works as a janitor, while soaking up the local jazz scene that sprang up there as part of "Bronzeville," the African American settlement that formed during the war. Then, one night at a club, he meets a dazzling singer who called herself the Bronze Nightingale, and his life is turned upside down.

Maybe (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Fiction
Capitalism – effect on the individual, Necessity of work, Will to survive, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Wakako Yamauchi about a middle-aged Japanese American woman working in a sweatshop with a group of undocumented immigrant workers from Latin America. Divorced after twenty-five years of marriage, Florence wanders into a garment factory with a help wanted sign and is hired on the spot and given a relatively responsible position despite her lack of qualifications due to what she thinks is the owners' stereotype about "Japanese." In her first person voice, she introduces various workers as well as the owner's much younger Colombian immigrant wife who takes an immediate disliking to her. She befriends a young couple who were forced to leave their young son back in Mexico and are unable to bring him to the U.S.; the husband semi-jokingly asks Florence to marry him so that he can get a green card. At the end of the story she recalls her and her family's confinement …

Memories of Place: Clarksburg's Japanese Language School (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Importance of community, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short documentary film on the Holland Union Gakuen ( Japanese language school ) in Clarksburg, California.

Moving Walls: American Nightmare to American Dream (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary, History
Power of the past, Working class struggles
Widely available

Documentary film about the enduring impact of the Heart Mountain , Wyoming, concentration camp—in particular, its surviving barracks—on both the local Wyoming population and on Japanese Americans who had been incarcerated there.

Nasakenai (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Historical Fiction
Evils of racism, Facing reality, Will to survive, Working class struggles
Limited availability

Short story about an Issei couple in the San Francisco Bay area in the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor . Both work as servants—the husband as a gardener and the wife as a maid—for prominent white families in a wealthy adjacent community and support three children at home, with a son in the army. After the attack, the husband goes to work and is assured by his employer that she will not fire him despite community pressure to do so. But the wife, who has worked for the family of a prominent lawyer for over a decade, is fired, since the lawyer represents a farming organization that supports anti-Japanese actions. An Issei gardener who works for the same family is also fired. Afterwards, the wife visits briefly with the family of the gardener and goes home to work on her garden, vowing that things will be okay.

My Name Is Yoshiko (book)

Books
Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Names – power and significance, Optimism – power or folly, Role of women, Working class struggles
Available

Memoir of an ordinary Nisei woman that includes her wartime incarceration in American concentration camps. Yoshiko Kawaguchi (born in 1921) was the eldest daughter in a farm family in Downey, California. After attending sewing school, World War II hits and the family ends up in the horse stalls of Santa Anita , then in the Rohwer , Arkansas, concentration camp. Resettling in Michigan, she eventually gets a job at a fancy restaurant. She meets and marries a Nisei from Kaua'i and settles in Chicago, where her sisters and parents also eventually settle. Her husband becomes a mail carrier, and they adopt a girl. Later, they move to back to Downey and retire in Kaua'i.

Doka B-100 (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Character – destruction, building up, Family – blessing or curse, Importance of community, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Ernest Nagamatsu on the difficult adjustment to civilian life of a group of World War II veterans. Written in the first person voice of an ex-GI named Hamamoto in 1954, "Doka B-100" coveys both Hamamoto's alienation and the welcoming embrace of Little Tokyo Los Angeles . Estranged from his domineering father because of the way he left the service (despite serving heroically in the 442nd , he quit before his time was up) and his choice of social work as an occupation, Hamamoto's wife had decided to go back to her family in Chicago with their daughter to get away from the arguments. Finding a small apartment in Little Tokyo and a part time job in a diner, he finds a niche in starting to counsel the veterans who would gather in a Little Tokyo pool hall. That work eventually leads to a paying job with the …

Drops of Water (short story)

Short Stories
Grades 9-12, Adult
Capitalism – effect on the individual, Immigrant experience, Individual versus society, Working class struggles
Widely available

Short story by Ferris Takahashi. A presumably young Sansei social worker and a colleague discuss the case of an elderly Issei homeless man who seems to want to remain homeless. Sections written from the perspective of the Issei man reveal his life as a laborer first on Hawai'i sugar plantations , then in the continental U.S. and the impact of his wartime incarceration and the razing of the residential hotel he once lived in.

Ganbatte: Sixty-year Struggle of a Kibei Worker (book)

Books
Memoir
Capitalism - effect on the individual, Convention and rebellion, Empowerment, Important of community, Injustice, Rights - individual and societal, Self-awareness, Working class struggles
Available

Kibei - Nisei labor organizer and communist shares his life story, including his unique experiences during World War II as the husband of a white woman with a mixed-race child incarcerated while he served with the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific Theater.

From Bullets to Ballots (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Quest for power, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Working class struggles
Widely available

Documentary film on Japanese Americans from Hawai'i as part of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and their role in the political realignment of Hawai'i after the war. From Bullets to Ballots was one of three short films directed by Robert A. Nakamura and produced by Karen L. Ishizuka in conjunction with From Bento to Mixed Plate: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Multicultural Hawai'i, an exhibition produced by the Japanese American National Museum in 1997.

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