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From Poston to the Prison Industrial Complex: Mia Yamamoto’s Unwavering Fight for Justice
Mia Yamamoto was, in her own words, “born doing time” in Poston in September 1943, and spent the first years of her life confined in an isolated prison camp in…
How We Remember
Y’all killed it this Day of Remembrance. We were so moved to see all the DOR posts, pictures, and family stories you shared on social media. This is the work…
SANSEI: On Being Japanese American in a Time of Crisis
This guest post is adapted from a speech delivered by Stanley N. Shikuma at the 2019 Day of Remembrance Taiko Fundraiser organized by the Minidoka Pilgrimage Planning Committee and co-sponsored…
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…
Japanese American Artists Behind Barbed Wire
Following the forced exile from the West Coast under Executive Order 9066, many incarcerated Japanese Americans turned to art as a way to cope with their harsh prison environment. Stripped…
The First Day of Remembrance, Thanksgiving Weekend 1978
Guest post by Frank Abe This week marks the 40th anniversary of the very first Day of Remembrance. It was invented here in Seattle, at a pivotal moment when the…
Densho’s Artist-in-Residence Program
Densho is first and foremost a history organization but as we have gotten more vocal about today’s political climate, we’ve become more acutely aware of the fact that art can…
This Isn’t The First Time White Supremacists Have Tried to Cancel Birthright Citizenship
In the latest in a long string of attacks on immigration, this week Trump declared he would issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship. Established by the 14th amendment in…
The WWII Politics of Farms and Labor
This #NationalFarmersDay, let’s talk about how during World War II Japanese Americans were forced to give up lucrative farming endeavors before being forced into concentration camps where they were made…
A Fresh Look at an Old Classic
John Okada: The Life & Rediscovered Work of the Author of No-No Boy Edited by Frank Abe, Greg Robinson, and Floyd Cheung John Okada’s No-No Boy is a legendary and…
Photo Essay: Early Nikkei Excursions to Mt. Rainier
On a clear day, the 14,411-foot peak of Mt. Rainier looms large on Seattle’s southern horizon. The glacial mountain has played a major role in the lives of people living…
8 Lessons in Resistance from Tule Lake
“Kodomo no tame ni. They’re our children, set them free.” In a protest at the site of the old Tule Lake jail earlier this month, survivors of WWII incarceration pounded…
The (Ongoing) Ruins of Japanese American Incarceration: Thirty Years After the Civil Liberties Act of 1988
By guest author Brandon Shimoda This year marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Civil Liberties Act, with which the United States closed the book on Japanese American…
The Supreme Court Got It Wrong, Again
In today’s ruling upholding the Muslim Ban, the Supreme Court is repeating the mistakes it made in defending the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.
“What an Ungodly Place to Meet”: Tales from Camp Toilets
In stories of the forced removal and incarceration, certain types of stories recur. There is the shock of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent exclusion orders, the preparations for removal including…
The Suitcase Project: What would YOU bring?
If Japanese American/Canadian incarceration happened today, what would you bring with you? That’s the question at the heart of Kayla Isomura’s new Suitcase Project. This year she has been photographing…
Give BIG to Densho on May 9th
Do you love the stories we share at Densho? Use our digital archives and educational materials? Appreciate the insightful analysis, on-the-ground advocacy, and fire clapbacks we deliver online and IRL?…
Yamamoto is an American Name Too
A middle school renaming process in Palo Alto, California has kicked up some of the same xenophobic dust that clouded public understandings about Japanese American complicity in the attack on…
Happy 100th Birthday, Gordon Hirabayashi!
April 23, 2018 marks what would have been Gordon Hirabayashi’s 100th birthday. As a young man, Gordon learned the hard way that without a vigilant and engaged citizenry, our Constitution…
An Open Letter to the Incarceration Apologists in Our Comment Section
First of all, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule of being triggered by other people’s gender pronouns, asking women what they were wearing, and trying to…
Sexual Violence, Silence, and Japanese American Incarceration
In recent months, an outpouring of stories of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault has sparked long overdue conversations around the prevalence of sexual violence and the policies, attitudes, and silences…
Wordsmith and Renaissance Woman Guyo Tajiri
In honor of National Women’s History Month we are excited to introduce the Guyo Tajiri Collection, new to the Densho Digital Repository. Guyo Tajiri was a journalist and writer at…
What We Can All Learn from One Family’s Century of Solidarity
Michael Ishii is a New York based activist and organizer whose deep ties to interracial solidarity began decades before he was even born. In remarks made to a crowd gathered…
10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About the “Loyalty Questionnaire”
Seventy-five years ago this week, Japanese Americans in War Relocation Authority (WRA) concentration camps were being asked to fill out the notorious “loyalty questionnaire.” After throwing them into these camps…