Browse > Time > 1940s
141 articles
From Barbed Wire to Battlefields: Japanese American Experiences in WWII (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- History
- Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Displacement, Evils of racism
- Available
Exhibition on the Japanese American incarceration and on Japanese Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana. Barbed Wire to Battlefields opened in the Joe W. and D. D. Brown Foundation Special Exhibit Gallery on March 15, 2014, and ran through October 12, 2014. The exhibition featured the photographs of Dorothea Lange , Ansel Adams , and Bill Mambo along with objects and video interviews. In conjunction with the exhibition, the museum put on a slate of public programs including book events, lectures, and film screenings, and incorporated curricular material and a webinar aimed at school children. The exhibition was funded in part by the Annenberg Foundation and the Eugenie and Joseph Jones Family Foundation. The National World War II Museum opened in New Orleans in 2000 at the National D-Day Museum.
Reflections of Internment: The Art of Hawaii's Hiroshi Honda (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Art
- Displacement, Expression through art, Injustice
- No availability
Exhibition of paintings by Hawai'i Kibei artist Hiroshi Honda, most of which depict the various internment and concentration camps he was held in during World War II. The paintings displayed came from a collection discovered and preserved by Honda's son, Ed Honda. Working with an ad hoc committee that included Bill Hoshijo and University of Hawai'i Professor Franklin Odo, the Hondas donated the collection to the Honolulu Academy of Art (HAA) (now the Honolulu Art Museum). With funding from the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Reflections of Internment opened at HAA on September 10, 1994, alongside a traveling exhibit, The View from Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942–1945 , a broader survey of art from the concentration camps. An accompanying thirty-three page catalog included essays by Odo and Marcia Morse and color reproductions of nineteen of the artworks; …
Mendez v. Westminster: For All the Children (book)
- Books
- Grades 3-5
- Grades 3-5
- Children's, Historical Fiction
- Change versus tradition, Injustice, Rights - individual or societal
- Limited availability
Children's picture book that tells in simplified form the story of the landmark Mendez case that ultimately ended segregated schools in California. The story is told through the perspective of Sylvia Mendez who is eight years old in 1943. Having rented the farm of Munemitsu family, who had been forcibly removed to concentration camps, they were new to Westminster, California. When she and her brothers are prohibited from attending the same school as her cousins (who can pass as "white") and must attend the inferior school for those of Mexican, African or Asian ancestry, her family decides to sue. With the help of lawyer David C. Marcus—and support from various organizations including the Japanese American Citizens League —the suit proves successful, ending segregation in the state. A brief epilogue notes the long-term impact of the case and the fate of Sylvia and others involved in it.
Legacy of the Nisei: Stories of Japanese American Internment and World War II Veterans (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived, Role of men, Injustice, Evils of racism
- Limited availability
The second video produced by the San Leandro Public Library built around interviews with Japanese American veterans and former concentration camp inmates from the San Francisco Bay area.
Arts and Crafts from the Camps: The Arkansas Camp Experience (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Art, History
- Beauty of simplicity, Desire to escape
- Limited availability
Exhibition of art and craft objects created by Japanese American inmates at the Arkansas concentration camps. Curated by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program in 2004, the exhibition included objects from the collection of Rosalie Gould, a former mayor of McGehee, Arkansas, who had amassed a substantial private collection. [1] Arts and Crafts from the Camps was one of the eight exhibitions mounted in the Little Rock area that were part of the Life Interrupted project, a collaboration between the Japanese American National Museum and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.
Beyond the Call of Duty: Honoring the 24 Japanese American Medal of Honor Recipients (exhibition)
- Museum Exhibitions
- Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- History
- Patriotism - positive side or complications, Heroism - real and perceived
- Limited availability
2004-05 exhibition on Japanese American recipients of the Medal of Honor , the country's highest military decoration organized by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Of the twenty-four Japanese American recipients, twenty-one were honored for their service during World War II. Beyond the Call of Duty was one of eight exhibitions in the Little Rock, Arkansas, area that were part of the Life Interrupted project, a collaboration between JANM and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of the exhibitions, all on some aspect of the Japanese American military experience , were displayed at the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History, the other two being Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers and Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II .
City in the Sun (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Fiction
- Displacement, Evils of racism
- Limited availability
1946 novel by Karon Kehoe that represented the first full-length work of adult fiction to dramatize Japanese American confinement.
Clark and Division (book)
- Books
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Convention and rebellion, Disillusionment and dreams, Quest for discovery
- Widely available
Edgar Award winning mystery novel by Naomi Hirahara set among Japanese Americans who have resettled in Chicago in 1944.
Conscience and the Constitution (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Convention and rebellion, Illusion of power, Injustice, Power of the past, Rights - individual or societal
- Widely available
Influential documentary film that tells the story of the draft resistance movement at Heart Mountain . Journalist Frank Abe produced, directed, and wrote the hour-long film, which was released in 2000.
The War Outside (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Grades 7-8
- Young Adult, History
- Coming of age, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Loss of innocence
- Widely available
Young adult novel by Monica Hesse that tells a complex story of a friendship between two teenage girls, one Japanese American and one German American, in the Crystal City internment camp in the fall of 1944.
A Place to Belong (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8
- Children's, Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Facing darkness, Family – blessing or curse, Growing up – pain or pleasure, Loss of innocence, Will to survive
- Widely available
Young adult novel by Cynthia Kadohata that tells the story of a Japanese American family's experience in postwar Japan from the perspective of an adolescent female protagonist.
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.
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.
The Hawai'i Nisei Story (website)
- Websites
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Virtual Exhibit
- Heroism – real and perceived, Role of men, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Website developed in the mid-2000s by the University of Hawai'i built around oral histories of Nisei veterans from Hawai'i.
Baseball Behind Barbed Wire (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Overcoming – fear, weakness, vice, Power of the past, Role of men
- Widely available
Documentary film on baseball in camp with a particular focus on the story of Issei baseball pioneer Kenichi Zenimura and Gila River . Filmmaker Yuriko Gamo Romer builds the story around interviews with Nisei Baseball Research Project Director Kerry Yo Nakagawa and Zenimura biographer Bill Staples, Jr., along with archival interviews with Tets Furukawa and Howard Kenso Zenimura, two Nisei who played under Zenimura, the latter interviews being augmented by Sabina Kariat's animation.
An Alien Place: The Fort Missoula Detention Camp, 1941–1944 (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Facing darkness, Injustice, War – glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
- Widely available
Documentary film by Kimberly Hogberg on the Fort Missoula Detention Camp that covers the history of the Italian seamen and Issei community leaders who were imprisoned there during World War II.
"Putting Them Where They Could Do No Harm" (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Evils of racism, Heartbreak of betrayal, Power of words
- Widely available
Short film that makes the case for renaming Fletcher Bowron Square in downtown Los Angeles, named after the wartime mayor of Los Angeles who agitated for the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Eschewing narration, the film uses Bowron's wartime radio addresses (voiced by Maciek Kolodziejeczak) as evidence of his anti-Japanese and pro-exclusion stance, juxtaposed with excerpts from Japanese Americans testifying about their wartime experiences in clips from testimony before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians . The film ends with many examples of entities whose names have been changed in recent years due to changing societal attitudes towards race, before calling for the renaming of Fletcher Bowron Square. The title comes from one of Bowron's radio addresses.
We Hereby Refuse: The Akutsu Family Resists (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Animation
- Chaos and order, Evils of racism, Heartbreak of betrayal
- Widely available
Simply animated story focusing on the Akutsu family, told in Nisei Jim Akutsu's first-person voice, starting with the arrest of his father after the attack on Pearl Harbor, his internment and interrogation, Jim's unsuccessful attempts to enlist, and the family's subsequent removal to Puyallup . In between the Akutsu family story are scenes of Japanese American Citizens League leaders Mike Masaoka and James Sakamoto cooperating with government officials to facilitate the roundup. The story was adapted from the book We Hereby Refuse: Japanese American Resistance to Wartime Incarceration by Frank Abe and Tamiko Nimura, with the animation based on Ross Ishikawa's artwork for the book.
displacement (book)
- Books
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Grades 7-8, Grades 9-12
- Graphic Novels, Historical Fiction
- Coming of age, Injustice, Power of the past
- Widely available
Graphic novel set in 2016 whose protagonist, sixteen-year-old "Kiku Hughes," begins to experience strange episodes of time travel that take her back to her grandmother's wartime exclusion and incarceration at Tanforan and Topaz . Completely lost at first, "Kiku" comes of age in the concentration camps, making close friends, building community, and enjoying a romance with another teenage girl. Back in the present, she and her mother—who reveals that she has also experienced such episodes of "displacement"—discuss the importance of their family history and the need to use that knowledge to protest on behalf of others.
Sowing Seeds of Life… of Hope (film)
- Films and Video
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Documentary
- Empowerment, Optimism – power or folly, Will to survive
- Widely available
Short film about Kumezo Hachimonji, an Issei seed store owner from El Monte, California, who brought seeds with him to Heart Mountain that were used to grow vegetables there. The film is based on an interview with Ike Hachimonji, Kumezo's Nisei son. The short film by Michi Tanioka came out Visual Communications ' Digital Histories program, a program to encourage older Asian American/Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander adults to tell stories through film.
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.
An Abandoned Pot of Rice (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Memoir
- Displacement, Immigrant experience, Importance of community, Progress – real or illusion
- No availability
Short essay by Hisaye Yamamoto DeSoto about the Kumamoto-mura community near Oceanside, California, where her family lived just prior to World War II. The pleasant reminiscences of life there are tempered by recollections of the chaos after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the events leading up to the forced removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast. The title of the story comes from the narrator's recollection of making a pot of rice intending to make rice balls on the day of their forced departure, but forgetting about it, leaving the full pot behind. Years later, she returns to the site of the community, which subsequently became a large military base which for a time housed tens of thousands of Southeast Asian refugees. Noting the similarities with the concentration camps she and her family were in, she observes that this group was the third group of Asians to …
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 .
The Day After Today (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Facing reality, Losing hope
- Widely available
Very short story by Toshio Mori (called "A Sketch") about an Issei man at Topaz who worries about what will happen to him and his wife when they are forced to leave the camp, since they have no children to help support them. He envies neighbors who have resettled children they can stay with in the Midwest and East. Published in the Pacific Citizen in February of 1945, the story captured the anxiety many Japanese Americans felt with news that the concentration camps would be closing by the end of the year.
The Flower Girls (short story)
- Short Stories
- Grades 9-12, Adult
- Heartbreak of betrayal, Loss of innocence, Optimism – power or folly, Progress – real or illusion
- Available
Short story by Lawson Fusao Inada . Two girls named Cherry and Rose—dubbed the "flower girls" by their teacher—become best friends as first and second graders in Portland, Oregon, just prior to World War II. They play at each other's houses after school and explore each other's neighborhood, though both agree that Cherry's—the Japantown area known as Shita Machi—is more interesting. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor drives a wedge between them, and Cherry and her family are soon sent away. While the girls exchange a few letters, they soon lose touch. Switching to the present, the narrator writes about a new Cherry and Rose, who meet to play in the Japanese garden of a Portland park.