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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…
Intersections of Black and Japanese American History: From Bronzeville to Black Lives Matter
During World War II, Black and Japanese American fates crossed in ways that neither group could have anticipated. While Japanese Americans were being forced to abandon the lives they’d built…
2016 Day of Remembrance Events
When the first Day of Remembrance was held in Seattle in November 1978, the event was staged as part of the Redress Movement seeking an official apology and monetary compensation for…
Densho Teach-In
[Update, March 14, 2016: Due to the overwhelming popularity of our first Digital Teach-In, we’ve scheduled a second one to be held May 1-6, 2016. Sign up here and please…
The Enduring Legacy of Fred Korematsu
Challenger of World War II exclusion and confinement, Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu (1919-2005) dedicated his life to the civil rights crusade that would eventually earn him a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Book Review: New Takes on the Japanese American Experience in WWII-Era Hawaii
Given the drama of mass forced removal and incarceration, it is no surprise that scholars have paid much more attention to the story of Japanese Americans on the continental U.S….
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.
Shosuke Sasaki’s 20-Year Battle to Eradicate “Jap” from Print Media
In the 1950s, Shosuke Sasaki launched a campaign to have the word “Jap” re-classed as a racial slur and eliminated from print media. He would continue that work for the better part of the…
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.
Ikeda Family Photo Album
In this guest post, Densho intern Odette Allen traces the story of one family through photos collected in family albums.
Gidra: Now Available Online
By Brian Niiya, Densho Content Director During its 1969 to 1974 run, Gidra chronicled the dramatic changes in the Asian American community, and was itself a catalyst for many of these…
Call to Action: Four Ways You can Help Increase Awareness of Japanese American WWII Incarceration
Who would have thought that as 2015 came to a close, we’d be debating World War II incarceration again? First it was Mayor David Bowers’ ill-advised invocation of Japanese American…