Browse > Time > 1942-1946

25 articles

The Art of Gaman: The Story Behind the Objects (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, Will to survive
Widely available

A short documentary film created by Rick Quan in 2010 to accompany the traveling exhibition, The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 which features arts and crafts created by Japanese American internees while living in World War II concentration camps. The film includes stories about the inmates who created the objects included in the exhibition, as told by their children and grandchildren. It also includes an interview with the exhibition's curator, Delphine Hirasuna, who describes The Art of Gaman' s purpose of celebrating the unique talents of these camp artists and helping people understand the larger story of the Japanese American mass confinement. The DVD release also includes Voices Long Silent , a 1980 short film by Bob Matsumoto, that was also shown in conjunction with The Art of Gaman exhibition.

The Bitter Memory: America's Concentration Camps (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Injustice
Widely available

Early film that provides an overview of the wartime forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast produced by the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. Bitter Memory tells the story through narration and interviews with former inmates accompanied by archival footage from Office of War Information/War Relocation Authority (WRA) films and WRA still photos. All footage—even contemporary interview footage and footage shot at Tule Lake —is in black and white. Identified inmate narrators include poet and playwright Hiroshi Kashiwagi , Mary Otani, Michi Mukai, and Kumito Ishida. The bulk of the film deals with living conditions in the concentration camps—the lack of privacy, the breaking up of the family unit, employment, food and so forth—along with the loyalty questionnaire and segregation . The film is also known as Bitter Memories: Tule Lake , even though only the last few minutes of the film focus on Tule …

Blue Jay in the Desert (book)

Books
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Children's, Picture book
Quest for discovery, Rights - individual or societal
Widely available

Blue Jay in the Desert by Marlene Shigekawa and illustrated by Isao Kikuchi is a children's picture book about how the gift of a hand-carved wooden blue jay symbolizes the love and hope a grandfather gives to his grandson.

Crafting History: Arts and Crafts from America's Concentration Camps (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Desire to escape
Limited availability

2002 exhibition at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). Crafting History highlighted some 400 objects from JANM's collection made by Japanese Americans held in American concentration camps during World War II, ranging from a five foot tall Buddhist altar carved in Heart Mountain to bird pins, clothing and other textiles, and furniture. Curated by Kristine Kim, the exhibition opened on November 16, 2002. A full slate of public programs took place during the six-month run of the exhibition, including many crafting workshops. Craft items from the camps were also the subject of The Art of Gaman , a lavishly illustrated book published in 2005 and an exhibition that traveled around the country and in Japan starting in 2010.

Dash (book)

Books
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8
Children's, History
Companionship as salvation, Evils of racism, Displacement, Heartbreak of betrayal
Widely available

Dash, Kirby Larson's book for 4-6 grade readers, tells the story of 11-year-old Mitsi Kashino and how the love for her dog Dash gives her strength while she and her family are sent to an incarceration camp.

Enemy Alien (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Displacement, Evils of racism
Limited availability

Bilingual memoir by Kiyo Hirano of her World War II experiences as an "enemy alien" is a rare example of an Issei woman's first-person perspective of the American concentration camps. Enemy Alien (Japanese title: Tekikoku gaijin) was translated into English by George Hirano and Yuri Kageyama and published by Japantown Arts and Media Workshop (JAM) Publications in 1983. Hirano's Japanese-English biographical account of her incarceration at the Merced Assembly Center and Amache and of her resettlement was originally written as an assignment for a creative writing class at the Japantown Arts and Media Workshop in San Francisco, and eventually published by the organization.

Fish for Jimmy (book)

Books
Grades 1-2, Grades 3-5
Grades 3-5
Children's, Picture book
Growing up - pain or pleasure, Heroism - real and perceived, Family - blessing or curse
Widely available

Fish for Jimmy: Inspired by One Family's Experience in a Japanese American Internment Camp , written and illustrated by Katie Yamasaki, is based on the author's great-grandfather's family experience at the Granada camp in Amache, Colorado. This picture book for young readers which expresses in few words an older brother's act of kindness and daring that kept a family strong during their imprisonment.

442: Live with Honor, Die with Dignity (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Evils of racism
Limited availability

A 2010 documentary film directed by Japanese filmmaker Junichiro Suzuki that tells the story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and other Japanese Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. It is the second film in Suzuki's trilogy of films on the Japanese American World War II experience.

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War (book)

Books
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Graphic novels
Coming of age, Displacement, Isolation
Widely available

Gaijin: American Prisoner of War by Matt Faulkner is the story of a hapa teenage boy's struggle living in post December 7 San Francisco, California. 13-year-old Koji Miyamoto discovers that life being biracial (his mother Adeline is white and his father Ichiro is Japanese) is just as difficult inside an incarceration camp as it was outside in the city after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Written for 5th through 8th grade readers, this graphic novel has a distinctive style of elongated caricatures colored with dark reds, yellows, blues, and browns.

Going for Honor, Going for Broke (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
Limited availability

Short 2006 documentary film that gives an overview of the 100th Infantry Battalion and 442nd Regimental Combat Team . Produced, written, directed, narrated & edited by George Toshio Johnston, he film was funded by a grant from the California Civil Liberties Public Education Program .

I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemoto's Years of Internment (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Memoir
Rights - individual or societal, Motherhood, Displacement
Widely available

The memoir of poet Toyo Suyemoto that spans her years of incarceration in Tanforan Assembly Center and later, at Topaz in Utah, from spring 1942 to late autumn 1945. The book, published in 2007 by Rutgers University Press, focuses on the quotidian life in an American concentration camp, while coping both physically and psychologically with the brutality of imprisonment behind barbed wire. The book is dedicated to Suyemoto's son Kay and details his short life from birth in Berkeley, California, to his first steps at Tanforan in a crowded horse stall, and finally to Utah where he developed a serious asthmatic condition and pneumonia in the harsh atmosphere of camp which eventually lead to his premature death. Suyemoto's memoir includes the impact of policies and wartime decisions on her family and the larger Japanese American community, bringing insight on complex and controversial questions of loyalty, citizenship and resistance. She also …

Lasting Beauty: Miss Jamison and the Student Muralists (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art
Limited availability

Exhibition featuring murals painted by Japanese American students at Rohwer High School under the direction of art teacher Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel. Lasting Beauty was one of eight exhibitions mounted in and around Little Rock, Arkansas, as part of the Life Interrupted project in 2004. It was later shown at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles in 2005.

Months of Waiting, 1942-1945 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Art, History
Expression through Art, Displacement, Injustice
No availability

The first group exhibition of art created in the wartime concentration camps. Produced by the California Historical Society in 1972 as a companion to its Executive Order 9066 photographic exhibition, Months of Waiting toured several venues from 1972 to 1974.

Relocations and Revisions: The Japanese-American Internment Reconsidered (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Displacement, Injustice, Evils of Racism
Limited availability

Exhibition at the Long Beach Museum of Art featuring work inspired by the wartime expulsion and incarceration by contemporary Japanese American artists, most of whom were too young to experience the concentration camps firsthand. Opening on May 10, 1992, Relocations and Revisions also included a program of videos and well as a catalog with both print and video components.

Sanga moyu (film)

Films and Video
Grades 9-12, Adult
Drama
Family - blessing or curse, Patriotism - positive side or complications
Limited availability

Japanese television series that dramatized the Japanese American experience. Sanga moyu (Burning Mountains and Rivers) was a 1984 series produced by NHK, Japan's national broadcasting network. Consisting of 51 episodes that ran 45 minutes each, the series debuted on January 8, 1984, and ran through December 23, 1984. The story was based on the novel Futatsu no sokoku (Two Homelands) by Toyoko Yamasaki and focused on the Amo family of Los Angeles whose three Nisei sons chose different paths during World War II while the family was incarcerated at Manzanar : one who volunteers for the U.S. Army and fights in Europe, another who serves in the Military Intelligence Service during the war crimes trials and American occupation, and a third who is trapped in Japan at the outbreak of war and drafted into the Japanese army. Japanese American organizations in the continental United States objected to the portrayal of …

The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps, 1942-1946 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Displacement, Beauty of simplicity
Available

Traveling exhibition highlighting art and craft objects made by incarcerated Japanese Americans in wartime concentration camps. Curated by Delphine Hirasuna and based on the 2005 book of the same name, The Art of Gaman exhibition has traveled to fourteen venues since its debut in 2006.

The Art of Living: Japanese American Creative Experience at Rohwer (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Art, History
Expression through art, Displacement
Available

Exhibition of art objects created by Japanese Americans in Rohwer . Mounted in 2011 by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, the exhibition was based on the collection of Mabel Rose Jamison Vogel, an art teacher at Rohwer. Vogel bequeathed the objects to McGehee, Arkansas, Mayor Rosalie Santine Gould, who in turn donated the collection to the Butler Center in 2010. The Art of Living included about 125 pieces, ranging from fashion sketches to bird pins to paintings in a wide variety of styles, augmented by photographs of the camp and interview segments with former Rohwer inmates. The project also includes an online version of the exhibition. Among the public programs tied to the exhibition's run were talks by Delphine Hirasuna, author of The Art of Gaman and by Vivienne Schiffer, daughter of Gould and author of the novel Camp Nine , which is set in a Rohwer-like concentration camp.

Children of Detention Camps, 1942-1946 (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Coming of age, Growing up - pain or pleasure
No availability

Traveling exhibition produced by the National Japanese American Historical Society that debuted in February 1992 at San Francisco City Hall. The sixty-panel photo exhibition looked at the incarceration experience from the perspective of children, who made up a significant portion of affected Japanese Americans. In addition to Japanese American youth, the exhibition includes the experiences of Aleuts and Japanese Latin Americans in the U.S. detention camps. A follow up to the 1990 exhibition U.S. Detention Camps, 1942–1946 , Children of Detention Camps was displayed at the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California and Children's Museum of Indianapolis among other venues.

Witness: Our Brothers' Keepers (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Evils of racism, Patriotism - positive side or complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Heroism - real and perceived
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans and Jewish Americans in the military during World War II and their participation in the liberation of Nazi extermination camps organized by the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) and the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. Witness debuted in on April 20, 1995, in JANM's Legacy Center Gallery to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. It closed on August 27, 1995. [1]

What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home? (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Heroism - real and perceived, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy, Isolation
Widely available

Exhibition on the return of Nisei soldiers to their Hood River, Oregon, home, recounting the chilly reception they received from the local community as well as highlighting those who stood up for them. Curated by Linda Tamura and Marsha Matthews and organized by the Oregon Historical Society (OHS), What If Heroes Were Not Welcome Home? debuted at the OHS in Portland in August 2013 in conjunction with the display of the Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Japanese American veterans of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team , 100th Infantry Battalion , and Military Intelligence Service .

Undaunted Courage, Proven Loyalty: Japanese American Soldiers in World War II (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Heroism - real and perceived, Patriotism - positive side or complications, War - glory, necessity, pain, tragedy
No availability

Exhibition on Japanese Americans in the military during World War II that was organized by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Public History Program in 2004. Undaunted Courage included the stories of the 100th Infantry Battalion , 442nd Regimental Combat Team , and Military Intelligence Service as well as a kiosk featuring stories of Japanese American veterans collected by the Go For Broke National Education Center. The exhibition was one of eight exhibitions in the Little Rock, Arkansas, 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. 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 Beyond the Call of Duty: Honoring the 24 Japanese American Medal of Honor Recipients and Witness: Our Brothers' …

Desert Exile (book)

Books
Grades 9-12, Adult
Grades 9-12, Adult
Biography, Non fiction
Injustice, Displacement, Evils of racism
Widely available

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family is an autobiography by noted children's book author Yoshiko Uchida that chronicles her experiences in the years before and during her incarceration in an American concentration camp during World War II. It was originally published in 1982 by the University of Washington Press and reissued with a new introduction by Traise Yamamoto in 2015.

Days of Waiting (film)

Films and Video
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Documentary
Expression through art, love and sacrifice, injustice
Limited availability

An award-winning 1990 documentary film by Steven Okazaki about the life and work of artist Estelle Peck Ishigo , a Caucasian woman who voluntarily entered the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming during World War II with her Japanese American husband. The film won an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject in 1991 and The George Foster Peabody Award.

Right from Wrong: Learning the Lessons of Honouliuli (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
History
Facing darkness, Rights - individual or societal
Limited availability

Wayside exhibition produced by the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i (JCCH) that debuted in 2011. The sixteen panel exhibition focuses on the Honouliuli detention camp and JCCH's efforts to preserve the site and tell the story of Hawai'i's World War II Japanese American internees. Funding for the exhibition came from a grant from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program and from the Island Insurance Foundation. JCCH contracted Mo'ili'ili Blind Fish Tank (MBFT) Media to produce the exhibition. Arnold Hiura wrote the exhibition script and Stephen Doi designed and built it.

Relics from Camp (exhibition)

Museum Exhibitions
Grades 3-5, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Adult
Adult
Art, History
Displacement, Injustice
Available

Art installation by Kristine Yuki Aono that debuted at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in 1996. The installation featured soil collected by the artist at each of the ten War Relocation Authority camp sites installed in shallow 3 x 3 square boxes on the floor with glass over them. At each venue, Aono sought community members who lent personal objects from themselves or other family members who had been in each camp that were installed in that camp's box. The exhibition was viewed by walking on the glass over the boxes.