Web Resources, Printed Resources and Videos

Web Resources, Printed Resources and Videos

This section serves as a reference for useful resources relating to Japanese American history, using primary and secondary sources, conducting oral histories, and exploring current events. It contains links to websites as well as listings of printed and video materials.

Japanese American Experience

Historical 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)
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)
Soldiers and the Camps (database of approximately 31,000 Nisei military)

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

Azuma, Eiichiro. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. [ link ]
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 ]
Hayashi, Brian Masaru. Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004. [ 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 ]
Howard, John. Concentration Camps on the Homefront: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. [ 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

Visit Densho's YouTube channel for selected interview excerpts, documentary shorts, and civil liberties curriculum 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. [ Watch on YouTube | link ]
Ostrander, Lucy. Island Roots. 2007. [ Watch on YouTube | link ]

Historical Resources

Links to Web Resources

Websites that provide information and lessons on using primary and secondary sources, and ways of evaluating such sources (including evaluating websites):

Using Historical Materials

Historians' Sources (American Memory, Library of Congress)
Using Primary Sources (American Memory, Library of Congress)
Media Analysis Tools (American Memory, Library of Congress)
Lesson Framework (American Memory, Library of Congress)
K-12 Lessons on using primary sources (California Heritage Collection - Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Critically Analyzing Information Sources (Cornell University)
Evaluating Websites, Criteria and Tools (Cornell University)
History Matters Reference Desk (Includes sections on Evaluating Websites and Digital Resources, Citing Digital Resources, Copyright & Fair Use Information, and Standards-History & Social Studies)
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Digital Classroom (Includes reproducible worksheets for analyzing primary source materials)
UCLA Institute on Primary Resources (Introduces teachers to resources available in the Department of Special Collections and how they can be used in the K-12 classroom)

Oral History Resources

MacKay, Nancy. Curating Oral Histories: From Interview to Archive. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press, 2007. [ link ]
Moyer, Judith. Step by Step Guide to Oral History, 1999. [ link ]
Oral History Workshop on the Web (Baylor University, Institute for Oral History)
Oral History Association (OHA) (Website includes information about oral history, links to many other sites, and resources)
Shopes, Linda. "Making Sense of Oral History." Downloadable manual on interpreting oral history, available from George Mason University, History Matters: The U.S. Survey on the Web, Making Sense of Evidence series, February 2002. [ link ]
Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. "Smithsonian Folklore and Oral History Interviewing Guide." [ link ]

Printed Materials

Available from the Oral History Association Website

OHA Publications page

"Oral History Evaluation Guidelines", 2nd edition, 1991. $This publication has been adopted by the National Endowment for the Humanities as the standard for conducting oral history. It is available free on the Oral History Association website, or you may order a printed copy. [ link ]
"Oral History for the Family Historian: A Basic Guide." Linda Barnickel 2006. Provides practical guidance to the novice who wishes to conduct a family oral history interview. It is designed to help the interviewer/researcher avoid common mistakes by effectively planning, conducting, and preserving a family oral history interview. It also contains an extensive list of sample questions, a legal release form, and other suggested resources. [ link ]
"Oral History and the Law" by John A. Neuenschwander 2002. 3rd edition. A completely new revision of an Oral History Association best-seller which provides an introduction to the many legal issues relating to oral history practice. This edition looks at the latest case law and how new technologies, such as videotaping, pose new problems. Appendices contain sample legal forms and copyright forms. Written for the layperson. [ link ]
"Oral History Projects in Your Classroom." Linda P. Wood, with introduction by Marjorie L. McLellan, 2001. Bibliography. This guide, written for classroom teachers, includes sample forms, handouts, numerous examples, curriculum suggestions and discussion questions, taken directly from real-life classroom oral history projects around the country. [ link ]
"Using Oral History in Community History Projects." Laurie Mercier & Madeline Buckendorf 1992. Offers concrete suggestions for planning, organizing, and undertaking oral history in community settings. Provides a step-by-step guide to project planning and establishing project objectives, with suggestions about identifying resources and securing funding. The authors address common problems encountered in executing such projects, and present a series of case studies of successful community oral history projects. Bibliography. [ link ]

Japanese American Experience

Historical Resources

Related Topics