Japanese American Resources

Japanese American Experience

Links to Web Resources

The following list is by no means comprehensive, but instead is intended to provide links to web sites that are rich in primary sources, including photographs and documents. The last section contains curricular materials.

Exclusion and Incarceration -- General

A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution (Website exhibit from the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History)
America's Concentration Camps (Photographs of the remnants of the internment camps by Prof. Masumi Hayashi)
Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites (National Park Service)
Family Album Project (Photographs taken by internees in both American and Canadian camps)
From Coast and Camp to the Inland Empire: Japanese-American Relocation and Evacuation to Eastern Washington during World War II (Whitworth College online exhibit)
Internment and Evacuation of San Francisco Japanese - 1942 (Museum of the City of San Francisco)
Japanese American National Museum
War Relocation Authority Photographs of Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement (7000 photos housed at UC Berkeley.)

Individual Incarceration Camps

For an overview of all the detention facilities that held Japanese Americans, see Densho's website Sites of Shame.

Camp Harmony Exhibit (University of Washington exhibit)
The Granada Relocation Center Site
Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project
Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation
Japanese Americans Internment Camps During World War II (University of Utah exhibit on Tule Lake and Topaz)
The Kooskia Internment Camp Project (Fort Stanton)
Life Interrupted: The Japanese American Experience in WWII Arkansas (Jerome and Rohwer)
The Manzanar Committee
The Manzanar National Historic Site (National Park Service site)
Minidoka Internment (National Park Service site)
Tanforan Assembly Center (PowerPoint slideshow that you have to save or open to view)
Topaz Museum
Tule Lake Committee
War Relocation Authority Camps in Arizona (University of Arizona exhibit on Poston and Gila River)

Military Service and Draft Resistance

Conscience and the Constitution (Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee from Resisters.com)
Go For Broke (Includes oral histories of Nisei veterans)

Curricula and Education

For Densho's downloadable curriculum units, see the Learning Center:

http://www.densho.org/learning

Discover Nikkei, an Internet resource of the Japanese American National Museum, includes a searchable database of lessons on Japanese American history and culture:

http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/resources/lessonplans

Printed Resource Citations

Japanese American History -- General

Chuman, Frank F. The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans. Del Mar, CA: Publisher's Inc., 1976. [ link ]
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988. [ link ]
Daniels, Roger. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion. 1962. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. [ link ]
Fugita, Stephen and David J. O'Brien. Japanese American Ethnicity: The Persistence of Community. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991. [ link ]
Ichioka, Yuji. The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1925. New York: Free Press, 1990. [ link ]
Ito, Kazuo. Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America. Shinichiro Nakamura, Jean S. Gerard, trans. Seattle: Executive Committee for the Publication of Issei: A History of Japanese Immigrants in North America, 1973. [ link ]
Niiya, Brian, editor. Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from 1868 to the Present. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1993.
Spickard, Paul R. Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformations of an Ethnic Group. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996. [ link ]
Yoo, David. Growing up Nisei: Race, Generation, and Culture among Japanese Americans of California, 1924-49. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000. [ link ]

World War II Incarceration

Burton, Jeffrey F., and Mary M. Farrell. World War II Japanese American Internment Sites in Hawai'i. Tucson, AZ: Trans-Sierran Archaeological Research; Honolulu: Japanese Cultural Center of Hawai'i Resource Center, 2007 [ report (22MB pdf) ] [ supplemental maps (19MB pdf) ].
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. 1982. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997. [ link ]
Daniels, Roger. Concentration Camps: North America; Japanese in the United States and Canada During World War II. 1971. Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing, 1993. [ link ]
Fugita, Stephen S., and Marilyn Fernandez. Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004. [ link ]
Gardiner, C. Harvey. Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981. [ link ]
Gordon, Linda, and Gary Okihiro. Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment. New York: W.W. Norton, 2006. [ link ]
Harth, Erica, ed. Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave, 2001. [ link ]
Higashide, Seiichi. Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. [ link ]
Irons, Peter. Justice At War: The Story of the Japanese American Internment Cases. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983. [ link ]
Inada, Lawson Fusao, ed. Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2000; Northam, U.K.: Roundhouse, 2001. [ link ]
Ishizuka, Karen. Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006. [ link ]
Kashima, Tetsuden. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. [ link ]
McNaughton, James C. Nisei Linguists : Japanese Americans in the Military Intelligence Service during World War II. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 2006. [ link ]
Muller, Eric L. American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. [ link ]
Muller, Eric L. Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001. [ link ]
Odo, Franklin. No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawai'i during World War II. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004. [ link ]
Robinson, Greg. By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 2001. [ link ]
Tateishi, John, ed. And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. 1984. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. [ link ]
tenBroek, Jacobus, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Matson. Prejudice, War and the Constitution, Causes and Consequences of the Evacuation of the Japanese Americans in World War II. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1968. [ link ]
Weglyn, Michi. Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps. 1976. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996. [ link ]

Redress and Reparations and the Coram Nobis Cases

Daniels, Roger, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H.L. Kitano. Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1986. [ link ]
Hatamiya, Leslie T. Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. [ link ]
Hohri, William Minoru. Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese-American Redress. Pullman: Washington State University Press, 1988. [ link ]
Irons, Peter, ed. Justice Delayed: The Record of the Japanese American Internment Cases. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989. [ link ]
Maki, Mitchell, et al. Achieving the Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999. [ link ]
Shimabukuro, Robert. Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2001. [ link ]
Yamamoto, Eric K., Margaret Chon, Carol L. Izumi, Jerry Kang, Frank H. Wu. Race, Rights and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment. Gaithersburg, NY: Aspen Law & Business, 2001. [ link ]

Arts and Literature

Eaton, Allen. Beauty Behind Barbed Wire: The Arts of the Japanese in Our War Relocation Camps. New York: Harper, 1952. [ link ]
Gesensway, Deborah and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images from America's Concentration Camps. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. [ link ]
Higa, Karen. The View From Within: Japanese American Art From the Internment Camps, 1942-1945. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1994. [ link ]
Hill, Kimi Kodani, Ed. Topaz Moon: Chiura Obata's Art of the Internment. Berkeley: Heydey Books, 2000. [ link ]
Hirasuna, Delphine. The Art of Gaman. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press, 2005. [ link ]
Hosokawa, Bill. Out of the Frying Pan. Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1998. [ link ]
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston. Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973. [ link ]
Okada, John. No-No Boy. 1957. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. [ link ]
Okubo, Mine. Citizen 13660. New York: Columbia University Press, 1946. New York: Arno Press, 1948. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983. [ link ]
Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor Was Divine. New York: Random House, 2003. [ link ]
Sone, Monica. Nisei Daughter. 1953. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. [ link ]
Uchida, Yoshiko. Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese American Family. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982. [ link ]
Yamada, Mitsuye. Camp Notes and Other Poems. San Lorenzo, CA. Shameless Hussy Press, 1976. [ link ]
Yamamoto, Hisaye. Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1988. [ link ]

Videos

See National Asian American Telecommunications Association for a more complete listing of videos on the exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Abe, Frank. Conscience and the Constitution: Japanese American Resistance in World War II. Hohokus, NJ: Transit Media, 2000. Examines Japanese American draft resistance during World War II. [ link ]
Ding, Loni. The Color of Honor. 1988. Examines Japanese American soldiers during World War II. [ link ]
Fournier, Eric Paul. Of Civil Rights and Wrongs: The Fred Korematsu Story. 1999. [ link ]
Hattendorf, Linda. The Cats of Mirikitani. 2006. [ link ]
Holsapple, Stephen, and Satsuki Ina, From a Silk Cocoon. 2005. [ link ]
Ishizuka, Karen, et al. Moving Memories. 1993. [ link ]
Nakamura, Robert. Looking Like the Enemy. 1996. [ link ]
Nakamura, Robert. Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray. 2001. [ link ]
Nakamura, Robert. Something Strong Within. 1994. [ link ]
Okazaki, Steven. Unfinished Business: The Japanese American Internment Cases. San Francisco: Mouchette Films Production, 1984. Examines Japanese American legal challenges to incarceration. [ link ]
Okazaki, Steven. Days of Waiting. 1988. [ link ]
Omori, Emiko. Rabbit In the Moon. 1999. [ link ]
Ostrander, Lucy. The Red Pines. 2003. [ link ]
Ostrander, Lucy. Island Roots. 2007. [ link ]