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Four Nisei Jazz Stars You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
As the music genre that defined the United States for the first half of the 20th century, jazz had a deep impact on Japanese Americans. For many Nisei, music served…
10 TV Shows That Depicted Japanese American Incarceration, For Better or For Worse
On August 12, the second season of AMC’s The Terror drops, set against the backdrop of the World War II removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. (Full disclosure: Densho aided…
My Kimono is Not Your Couture
Items called “kimono” are having a moment in the fashion world. But as guest blogger Emi Ito points out, this trend revolves around appropriation and erasure of histories that are…
The Niʻihau Incident: Déjà vu All Over Again
A new film based on the Niʻihau Incident is stirring up anger over its misrepresentations of Hawaiian and Japanese American history. Densho Content Director Brian Niiya breaks down what the…
10 Documentaries about Japanese American Incarceration you can Watch Online for Free Right Now
There are now literally a couple of hundred documentary films about some aspect of the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. Unfortunately, many of them…
Baseball in American Concentration Camps: History, Photos, and Reading Recommendations
Baseball season is here again! This favorite of American sports was also a popular pastime in Japanese American concentration camps. Here we delve into that history through an excerpt from…
Racism by Definition: Challenging the Use of Racial Epithets in Online Dictionaries
“Jap.” It’s a violent racial slur that has long since fallen out of use. Or so we thought.
Japanese American Scouting Traditions: A Brief History and Photo Essay
The intersections between Japanese American history and scouting traditions run deep; two national news stories have called attention to that history in recent weeks.
Segregated Swimming: Oral Histories of Japanese Americans and Public Pools
With the end of summer looming on the horizon, people everywhere are savoring the season’s final days of poolside leisure: seeking the refuge of cool water on a hot afternoon,…
Making It Worse
By Densho’s Content Director Brian Niiya Japanese Americans often object when journalists, screenwriters, or others minimize or distort some aspect of the wartime incarceration. But should we also object when…
Nisei Vue and Scene Collection Added
Nisei Vue and Scene were resettlement era Nisei pictorial magazines based in Chicago that reflected the hopes and dreams of at least a segment of the Nisei population in the…
Oddball Camp Stories in Popular Culture: California Generation
By Brian Niiya, Content Director, Densho In the work I’ve been doing on the Densho Encyclopedia, I’ve come across quite a number of oddball camp references in mainstream popular culture…
Japanese TV Drama Filming in Seattle
“A major film is being made in Seattle, but you’ll probably never see it. It’s a 10-hour movie that will be shown only in Japan.” That’s how a KING 5…
Powerful Storytelling
I came across an interview with Leslie Ishii, a Sansei actor seen on TV in the series Lost and Desperate Housewives, and soon to be seen in the movie Fame….
Raising Awareness
The front page article of yesterday’s Seattle Times about Don Wakamatsu, the Mariner’s new head coach and first Asian American major league baseball coach, was both remarkable and inspirational for…
Our Favorite Japanese American Artists
Densho conducts a monthly poll of its faithful eNews readers (why not sign up for a free subscription?). In December we asked about people’s most cherished Japanese American artists. The…