Browse > Time > 1940s
133 articles
Issei and Nisei: The Internment Years (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Displacement, Importance of community, Role of religion - value or hypocrisy
- Available
Memoir of a young Issei Episcopal clergyman based in Washington state during the trying years of World War II. Published in the fall of 1967, Daisuke Kitagawa 's account was among the first book-length first-person accounts of the Japanese American incarceration.
Japanese American Internment Camps (Children's Press) (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Children's, History
- Evils of racism, Hazards of passing judgment, Injustice, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Available
Short overview book for younger children on the wartime removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans that is part of Children's Press's "Cornerstones of Freedom," Second Series of books.
Japanese American Internment Camps (Greenhaven Press, 2001) (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8
- Grades 7-8
- Young Adult, History
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Hazards of passing judgment, Injustice
- Available
Anthology of first-person pieces on the wartime removal and incarceration as part of Greenhaven Press's "History Firsthand" Series.
Japanese American Internment Camps (Greenhaven Press, 2002) (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8
- Grades 7-8
- Young Adult, History
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Hazards of passing judgment, Injustice
- Available
Collection of pieces on the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans for middle and high school audiences. As part of Greenhaven Press's "Opposing Viewpoints" and "At Issue in History" series, the assembled pieces express different perspectives on the topic.
The Japanese American Internment: An Interactive History Adventure (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Children's, History
- Displacement, Injustice, Patriotism – positive side or complications
- Available
Children's book on the wartime incarceration by Rachael Hanel that allows the reader to choose one of three stories and to make a series of decisions in each story that determines its outcome.
The Japanese Internment Camps: A History Perspectives Book (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Children's, History
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Injustice, Patriotism – positive side or complications
- Available
Children's book on the wartime removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans that focuses on Manzanar and tells its story through three first-person accounts.
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.
Journey Home (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Children's, Young Adult
- Evils of racism, Family - blessing or curse, Importance of community
- Available
Novel for young adults about a Japanese American family leaving the concentration camps and eventually returning to their home by prolific author Yoshiko Uchida, written as a sequel her 1971 book Journey to Topaz .
Journey of Heroes: The Story of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8
- Heroism – real and perceived, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Evils of racism
- Widely available
A comic book version of the story of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team told in the first person voice of a Nisei from Hawai'i.
Journey to Topaz: A Story of the Japanese-American Evacuation (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8
- Grades 6-8
- Children's, Young Adult
- Displacement, Growing up - pain or pleasure
- Widely available
Pioneering 1971 novel by Yoshiko Uchida that was the first book for children on the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans written by a Japanese American. Based in part on Uchida's own family experience, Journey to Topaz was the first of five books the prolific children's book author wrote that focused on the incarceration experience.
Leap of Faith: How Enmanji Temple Was Saved (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Importance of community, Role of Religion – virtue or hypocrisy
- Available
Documentary short film by Lina Hoshino about a group of white Christian teenagers who guard a California Buddhist temple during World War II in an effort to deter vandalism.
Legacy of the Nisei Veterans: WWII Stories of the 100th/442nd and Military Intelligence Service (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived, Role of men
- Limited availability
Documentary film made up of interviews with ten Nisei World War II veterans from the San Francisco Bay area. Short segments of the interviews are organized by topic in more or less chronological fashion, with the occasional insertion of still photographs from the period. Segments include the reaction to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the arrest of Issei leaders, Executive Order 9066 and its aftermath, early recruits to the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), the formation of the 442nd and the loyalty questionnaire episode of early 1943, the battlefield experiences of the MIS in the Pacific and the 442nd in Europe, and the role of the MIS in occupation Japan. The film ends with a brief summary of each man's life after the war. One unusual element in the inclusion of Takeshi "Gish" Endo's story of being recruited out of Heart Mountain by the British Political Warfare Mission, and doing translation …
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 Legend of Miss Sasagawara (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Female roles, Hazards of passing judgment, Individual versus society, Losing hope
- Widely available
Short story by Hisaye Yamamoto that takes place in an Arizona concentration camp during World War II and centers on the odd activities of one woman in the camp, as described by a college age female fellow inmate. Mari Sasagawara, a former ballet dancer, arrives with her Buddhist priest father upon transfer from another camp and soon becomes the subject of much gossip by other camp inmates for her regal bearing and aloofness. After being absent from the camp for a few months—taken to an institution in Phoenix—she returns a changed woman, friendly and sociable, even organizing and teaching a dance troupe of young girls. But after the narrator leaves the camp to attend school in Philadelphia, her friend tells her that Miss Sasagawara's malaise had returned and that she was taken out of the camp again. The story ends with the narrator finding a poem by Miss Sasagawara published …
Letters to Eve (play)
- Plays
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Expression through art, Facing darkness, Love and sacrifice, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- No availability
Musical play that juxtaposes the experiences of a Japanese American family in Manzanar with that of an African American musician and his Jewish girlfriend held in captivity in a Nazi prison camp.
Life behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Facing reality, Immigrant experience, Nationalism – complications, Role of men
- Widely available
Internment memoir by Honolulu Issei publisher and community leader Yasutaro Soga . Originally published in 1948 as Tessaku seikatsu , it was translated into English by Kihei Hirai and a team of volunteers at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) and published by the University of Hawai'i Press in 2008.
The Little Exile (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 7-8
- Memoir
- Evils of racism, Family – blessing or curse, Female roles, Immigrant experience
- Available
Memoir by Jeanette A. Arakawa covering her wartime incarceration at the Stockton Assembly Center and Rohwer , Arkansas, concentration camp and postwar resettlement in Denver. Though written in the first person, her name and those of others in the book have been changed.
The Long Journey and the Short Ride (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Darkness and light, Motherhood, Optimism – power or folly, Reunion
- Available
Seemingly autobiographical story by Toshio Mori about the author and his brother, a paralyzed veteran of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , recalling the latter's visit to Topaz prior to shipping out for combat in Europe. The author and his mother get a pass to leave Topaz for the first time since they had arrived in order to see the brother off at the train station. Their apprehensions about being outside the camp are eased by a white family—who had also just seen a son off to war—who offer them a ride to town. Shifting back to the present of the story, the author notes the successful recovery that his brother has made since the war and both brothers lament that neither of their parents lived to see that recovery. The same incident is the basis for another story Mori had written in 1943 titled " The Travelers ." "The …
The Loom (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Adult
- Fiction
- Communication – verbal and nonverbal, Facing darkness, Loneliness as destructive force, Motherhood, Power of silence
- Widely available
Short story by R. A. Sasaki that portrays the life of a Nisei woman looking both backwards and forwards after the death of one of her daughters. Born and raised in San Francisco where her family ran a boarding house, the unnamed woman graduated from the University of California before being incarcerated with her family in Tanforan and Topaz during World War II. Returning to San Francisco after the war having married a Kibei man she had known from before the war, she has four daughters while her husband works in the flower industry. Devoted to her daughters, she is at a loss as they leave the house to pursue their own lives and after one dies in a mountain climbing accident. Her daughters' efforts to bring her out of her torpor are largely unsuccessful until one gives her a loom, through which she is able to express the feelings …
Lost LA: From Little Tokyo to Crenshaw (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Empowerment, Importance of community, Power of the past, Social mobility
- Widely available
Episode of the Lost LA public television series that looks at the return of Japanese Americans to Los Angeles Little Tokyo after their wartime incarceration and the postwar evolution of the Seinan or Crenshaw community, where Japanese Americans and African Americans lived side-by-side for several decades. Host Nathan Masters interviews Japanese American National Museum curator and collection manager Kristen Hayashi about the return to Little Tokyo and subsequent move to the suburbs; dancer and activist Nobuko Miyamoto , who grew up in the Crenshaw neighborhood after the war; Vietnam veteran and activist Nick Nagatani, who was one of the founders of Yellow Brotherhood, a social service organization in the community; and Joy Simmons, a local activist and arts advocate who grew up with many Japanese Americans in the 1960s and 1970s.
Lost LA: Three Views of Manzanar: Adams, Lange, Miyatake (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary, History
- Expression through art, Power of the past
- Widely available
Episode of the Lost LA public television series that looks at the Manzanar photography of Ansel Adams , Dorothea Lange and Toyo Miyatake . Series host Nathan Masters visits the Manzanar National Historic Site , where he discusses the various approaches of the trio with Park Ranger Rose Masters and contemporary photographer Paul Kitagaki and visits the sites of some of their iconic photographs. Masters then visits the Toyo Miyatake Studios in San Gabriel, California, where he meets Alan Miyatake, the grandson of Toyo.
Manzanar (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Quest for discovery, Growing up – pain or pleasure
- Limited availability
Experimental documentary film by Bob Nakamura made in 1971 that was one of the first films to explore the legacy of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.
Manzanar National Historic Site Educator Resources Kit (curricula)
- Curricula
- Grades 3-5, Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Displacement, Evils of racism, Self-awareness, War
- Available
"How does identity shape my experience in America?" is the central question which serves to unify the wide range of materials in this resource kit. The kit includes printed materials (lesson plans, reproductions of primary sources, official park brochure, booklet for self-guided tours, Densho brochure), and digital resources (video documentary, electronic field trip, biographical sketches of former inmates, related standards, lesson plans, and historical photos). The Manzanar National Historic Site Educator Resources Kit was supported by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program and the Manzanar History Association.
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.
Meeting at Tule Lake (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Power of the past, Evils of racism, Injustice
- Limited availability
Documentary film produced and directed by Scott T. Tsuchitani that features interviews with seven former Tule Lake inmates talking about life in the camp, the "loyalty questionnaire" and segregation, and the importance of remembering, intercut with footage of poet Hiroshi Kashiwagi reading the title poem and of a Tule Lake Pilgrimage. Meeting at Tule Lake was produced by the Tule Lake Committee for the 1994 Tule Lake Pilgrimage.