Browse > Time > 1920s to 2000s
8 articles
Daniel K. Inouye – An American Story (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Patriotism – positive side or complications, Empowerment
- Available
Documentary film that covers the life and career of Daniel K. Inouye , Nisei war hero from Hawai'i and nine term U.S. Senator.
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.
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.
Island Roots (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Change versus tradition, Rebirth
- Widely available
Short documentary film on the Filipino American community on Bainbridge Island, Washington from the migration of the first immigrants in the late 1920s to the present day. Many came to Bainbridge to serve as farm laborers on strawberry farms run by Japanese Americans. During World War II, when Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from Bainbridge and the entire West Coast, many turned their farms over to their Filipino American farmhands to mange in their absence. As a result, many Japanese American farmers were able to return to intact farms after the war. Some Filipino Americans were able to use this as a jumping off point to owning their own farms after the war. The film concludes with the restoration of the Filipino American community hall on Bainbridge and the return of the Strawberry Festival that serve as the center of the community in the present.
Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir, Children's
- Evils of racism, Facing darkness, Family – blessing or curse, Injustice, Loss of innocence, Power of the past
- Widely available
Incarceration memoir of life at Pinedale Assembly Center , Tule Lake , and Minidoka , by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald, a seventeen-year-old Nisei at the time of her and her family's forced removal from their Washington state farm. First published in 2005 by NewSage Press, it was followed by a young reader's edition in 2010.
Lucky Ears: The True Story of Ben Kuroki, World War II Hero (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Grades 3-5
- Children's, Biography
- Patriotism – positive side or complications, Role of men, Heroism – real and perceived, Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice
- Widely available
Biography of Nisei war hero Ben Kuroki , written for a fourth grade audience.
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.
Rosebud (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Desire to escape, Names – power and significance, Role of women, Social mobility
- Available
Short story by Wakako Yamauchi that traces the friendship and rivalry between the narrator and another Japanese American girl/woman from childhood in the 1930s through the incarceration period to old age. In the section that takes place at Poston , the narrator works for the Poston Chronicle while Marion is prohibited from working by her overprotective mother until she suffers a nervous breakdown. Later, Marion marries a prominent non-Japanese American economist and largely lives her life outside the ethnic community.