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Family Detention, Then and Now
As the 2016 election cycle ramps up – with a Republican nominee who has described Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, and a Democrat who supports deporting child migrants…
Views of Post-WWII Hiroshima: A Japanese American Woman Documents Life in Occupied Japan
Shiuko Sakai was twenty three years old when she decided to join a friend to work for the Department of the Army in Occupied Japan. At the time of this…
Over More than a Hundred Years of Farm Labor History, Japanese and Mexican Americans Have Been Both Allies and Adversaries
Berry season is in full swing, with farmer’s markets and produce departments across the country overflowing with these quintessential summer fruits. But the story isn’t always so sweet for the migrant…
Stranded: Nisei in Japan Before, During, and After World War II
The story of the “strandees”—the period term for Nisei trapped in Japan when passage back to the U.S. was effectively cut off from late 1941 until a year two after…
Dispatch from the Minidoka Pilgrimage: Honoring the Legacy of Hunt High School Principal Jerome T. Light
In this special report from the annual pilgrimage to the site of the Minidoka concentration camp, Dr. Eugene H. Freund writes about a presentation on Hunt High School principal Jerome T. Light….
Photo Essay: Bon Festivals
This weekend, cities along the west coast will hold their annual Bon festivals. Bon Odori communal folk dances are a central part of the bon festival, a Buddhist summer ceremony in which the spirits of…
A “doubly strange and bewildering day:” Views of July 4th From Behind Barbed Wire
Ah, the Fourth of July, that special day when we celebrate the wealthy colonialists and slaveowners who birthed our nation by drinking several tons of “America” and making stuff go…
Common Myths of WWII Incarceration: “More Than Half Were Children”
The surge of children’s books, school curricula, films, websites, plays, and exhibitions about the wartime forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans has, for the most part, been a good thing….
Do You Have a Relative Who Was Interviewed by Densho?
Twenty years ago, we set out with the goal of recording and preserving stories of World War II incarceration so that future generations could learn from them. That mission is…
On Yuri Kochiyama’s 95th Birthday, 5 Enduring Quotes to Celebrate With
Happy birthday, Yuri! Yuri Kochiyama, who passed away in 2014, would have celebrated her 95th birthday today. (I’d like to imagine the K-Bears are throwing her a party somewhere, but…
Teaching with Primary Sources: Summer 2016 Demonstration Project
We are pleased to announce that we will be launching a new and improved version of our online course later this summer! Watch this space for an announcement in the coming…
Rooted in Japanese American Concentration Camps, “Model Minority” became Code for Anti-Black
By now most of us have heard the news: former NYPD officer Peter Liang will serve no jail time for killing Akai Gurley. Liang was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter…
Photo Essay: A Tribute to Japanese American Migrant Workers
May Day is known the world over as a day of worker protest and rebellion. After the bloody Haymarket Riots of 1886, the May 1 holiday became so notorious for its…
How One Woman Shaped the Collective Memory of Japanese American Removal
In the late spring of 1942, The Andrews Sisters’ jaunty Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree was on its steady rise to the top of the charts; the “taut and poignant” romance This Above…
Book Review: “Relocating Authority” with the Written Word
Densho Content Director Brian Niiya reviews Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration by Mira Shimabukuro (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2015). Join the author and Densho Director Tom Ikeda…
Sign up for the May 2016 Densho Digital Teach-In
Far too many Americans are completing primary, secondary, and even college education without learning about a critical moment in our shared history: the World War II mass incarceration of 120,000…
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…
Visionary Sculptress Ruth Asawa
Ruth Asawa is best known for her wizardry in weaving copper wire into enchanting, diaphanous forms. Her work, once at the vanguard of modernist sculpture, is still widely celebrated. This month, Asawa’s gossamer creations…
Mitsuye Endo: The Woman Behind the Landmark Supreme Court Case
Mitsuye Endo was a plaintiff in the landmark lawsuit that ultimately led to the closing of the concentration camps and the return of Japanese Americans to the West Coast in…
Remembering Don Nakanishi
By Brian Niiya, Densho Content Director We’ve lost one of the pioneering figures in Asian American studies with the passing of Don Nakanishi yesterday at age 66.
Memories of Toshiko Takaezu
Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011) was one of America’s foremost ceramic artists and a highly regarded teacher of ceramics. She was credited with being one of the key figures in the mid-century…
5 Bad Ass Japanese American Women Activists You Probably Didn’t Learn About in History Class
Since history tends to sideline the central role so many women played in the major social movements of the 20th century, here’s a little herstory lesson about five women warriors…
Japanese American Women’s Lives in the Camps and Beyond
Citizen 13660, Farewell to Manzanar, and Nisei Daughter, are perhaps the most widely known accounts of wartime incarceration by women, but there are many less widely known works that also…
Letter from “Camp Harmony”: Kikuye Masuda Struggles to Adjust to Life at Puyallup
Hundreds of handwritten letters in the Densho archives provide an intimate view of the turmoil experienced by individuals during World War II incarceration. These letters add a human dimension to the incarceration…