The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Japanese American Internment

As you'll see from the extensive suggestions below, historians and teachers have already shouldered "the burden of a more complete account of the Japanese American experience during the war." We've been able to list only a fraction, and we apologize to the individuals and groups whose books and websites we've been forced to omit. Your best starting point for finding further materials is:

Ng, Wendy L. Japanese American Internment during World War II: A History and Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

For broader background in the history of the Japanese in the United States before and after the war, consult some of these books:

Azuma, Eiichiro. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.

Daniels, Roger. The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962.

Hosokawa, Bill. Nisei: The Quiet Americans. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2002.

Masaoka, Mike. They Call Me Moses Masaoka. New York: Morrow, 1987. Memoir of the controversial Japanese American activist.

O'Brien, David J, and Stephen Fugita. The Japanese American Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

Wilson, Robert Arden, and Bill Hosokawa. East To America : A History Of The Japanese In The United States. New York: Morrow, 1980.

Internet

For an easy-to-understand example of the legal debate over relocation and internment, you may want to review the 1944 case of Korematsu v. United States with your students:

/historynow/03_2005/inter4.php

Here is the text of Executive Order 9066:

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=74&page
=transcript

Wikipedia article on Gen. John DeWitt who initiated internment of Japanese Americans on Pacific Coast:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_L._DeWitt

Brief summary of history of War Relocation Authority, with links to essays on individual camps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Relocation_Authority

Fascinating 2001 report of National Parks Service on the relocation camps and their status as potential historic sites:

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/internment/report.htm

Manzanar is the best known camp, and Wikipedia article on this site is good.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manzanar_War_Relocation_Center

The National Park Service's Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites is an excellent online guide to the camps' history and their current status as historic sites and monuments:

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/anthropology74/cet.htm

Part of Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP), the Park Service also features a great lesson plan -- The War Relocation Camps of World War II: When Fear was Stronger than Justice:

http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/
89manzanar/89manzanar.htm

Manzanar lesson plans:

http://www.nps.gov/manz/forteachers/lesson-plans.htm

Supplementary Resources page for When Fear was Stronger:

http://www.nps.gov/nr/twhp/wwwlps/lessons/89manzanar/89lrnmore.htm

Be warned that some links are out of date or "vague" in that they take you to a site but not the area of the site in which you'll be interested.

Japanese American National Museum:

http://www.janm.org/

You may want to consider investing in their educational toolkit, subsidized by Boeing:

http://www.janm.org/about/depts/education/toolkit.php

Exhibition of Ansel Adams photos of Manzanar:

http://www.janm.org/exhibits/anseladams/

Highlights of collection at Library of Congress on American Memory:

http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/anseladams/

National Archives "Teaching with Documents" series, lesson plan on using Archives photos and documents relating to Japanese American internment:

http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation/
activities.html

The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco has a terrific online site for students providing a useful summary of newspaper coverage in the city on the question of Japanese American internment, as well as images of sample San Francisco press coverage of the question. Wonderful, frightening stuff:

http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html

Yahoo Directory has a good list of links:

http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/History/U_S__History/
By_Time_Period/20th_Century/Military_History/World_War_II/
Internment_Camps/Japanese_American/

The exhibition on Camp Harmony from University of Washington Library includes heartbreaking letters to two Seattle schoolteachers from their students who were sent to relocation centers:

http://www.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/harmony/exhibit/

American Memory Learning Page on Japanese American internment:

http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/timeline/depwwii/wwarii/
japanam.html

Oregon History Project's lesson plan on that state's experience:

http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/
learning_center/dspResource.cfm?
resource_ID=FC218438-FF32-E1B7-86B4F4B030BFC962

Teacher Oz's page of links on subject:

http://www.teacheroz.com/Japanese_Internment.htm

Goforbroke.org, an organization of Japanese American veterans, provides games, maps, oral histories, timelines, campaigns, list of medals won -- histories of individual units -- you name it:

http://www.goforbroke.org/

Don't miss their list of Web links:

http://www.goforbroke.org/history/history_go_resources.asp?media=16

2003 "Children of the Camps" documentary and links:

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/

EridDigest pieces on teaching internment issues:

http://www.ericdigests.org/2001-3/japanese.htm

42explore site lit of links:

http://www.42explore2.com/japanese.htm

Idaho Public Television's modest but affecting documentary "Of Camps and Combat" is first rate -- you can access interviews and speeches. Here is a good list of links for the history of Japanese Americans in the Pacific Northwest:

http://idahoptv.org/productions/specials/homefront/campsandcombat/

The National Japanese American Monument to Freedom. About.com has good piece and, of course website of the Japanese American Monument Foundation:

http://godc.about.com/od/monumentsusgovernment/a/
japaneseammem.htm

http://njamf.com/home/

Text of 1988 Civil Liberties Act providing reparations to Japanese Americans:

http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/civilact.html

Sketch of Mike Masaoka:

http://www.pbs.org/itvs/conscience/the_story/characters/
masaoka_mike.html

The Japanese American Citizens League has a great education section, be sure to see their suggested reading for different grade levels:

http://www.jacl.org/education.php

The Dr. Seuss cartoons mentioned in this essay are all available online. Go to this page, then "Countries/regions" and choose "Japan":

http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm

Additional Books

These are general studies of the policies of relocation and internment:

Burton, Jeffery, et al. Confinement And Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American Relocation Sites. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002.

Daniels, Roger. Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II. New York: Hill and Wang, 1993.

Drinnon, Richard. Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Myer and American Racism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Myer was director of Japanese-American relocation camps during the war and head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1950-53. Drinnon examines patterns of racism shown throughout his career.

Elleman, Bruce. Japanese-American Civilian Prisoner Exchanges and Detention Camps, 1941-45. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Kashima, Tetsuden. Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003.

Muller, Eric L. American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.

Myer, Dillon S. Uprooted Americans: the Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority during World War II. Tucson, University of Arizona Press 1971. Myer was director of the government's wartime Relocation Authority. Compare Myer's defense of his policies with Richard Drinnon's study of Myer's career.

Robinson, Greg. By Order Of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

Smith, Page. Democracy on Trial: The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.

These are a sample of first-person accounts and scholarly studies of specific camps and regions:

Weglyn, Michi. Years Of Infamy: The Untold Story Of America's Concentration Camps. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1996.

These are some of the useful anthologies of firsthand accounts of Japanese American experiences across the nation:

Gesensway, Deborah, and Mindy Roseman. Beyond Words: Images From America's Concentration Camps. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Recollections and pictures by Japanese American artists in the camps.

Harth, Erica, ed. Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave, 2001.

Fugita, Stephen, and Marilyn Fernandez. Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004.

Tateishi, John, comp. And Justice for All: An Oral History of the Japanese American Detention Camps. New York: Random House, 1984.

These are a sample of first-person accounts and scholarly studies of specific camps and regions:

Arrington, Leonard J. The Price of Prejudice: The Japanese-American Relocation Center in Utah during World War II. Logan Faculty Association, Utah State University, 1962.

Bailey, Paul Dayton. City in the Sun: The Japanese Concentration Camp at Poston, Arizona. Los Angeles, Westernlore Press, 1971.

Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki. Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience during and after the World War II Internment. New York: Bantam Books, first published in 1973 and now available in a 2002 reprint. This is one of the first and best known memoirs of camp experience, and it remains a standout. There's even a Webpage devoted to lesson plans for teaching from this book:

http://www.enotes.com/farewell-manzanar-lesson/

Robinson, Gerald H. Elusive Truth: Four Photographers at Manzanar. Nevada City, CA: C. Mautz, 2002.

Suyemoto, Toyo. I Call to Remembrance: Toyo Suyemoto's Years of Internment. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.

Takemoto, Kenneth Kaname. Nisei Memories: My Parents Talk About The War Years. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.

Taylor, Sandra C. Jewel of the Ddesert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

Ueno, Harry Y. Manzanar Martyr: An Interview with Harry Y. Ueno. Fullerton, Calif.: Oral History Program, California State University, 1986.

Wehrey, Jane, ed. Voices from This Long Brown Land: Oral Recollections of Owens Valley Lives and Manzanar Pasts. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

Here are books about Japanese Americans who protested their treatment:

Muller, Eric L. Free to Die for their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Collins, Donald E. Native American Aliens: Disloyalty and the Renunciation of Citizenship by Japanese Americans during World War. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985.

Nishimoto, Richard S. Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at Poston, Arizona. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1995.

There's a growing body of interesting work on Japanese American women as well:

Diggs, Nancy Brown. Steel Butterflies: Japanese Women and the American Experience. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

Moore, Brenda L. Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003.

The determination of Japanese-Americans to obtain official recognition of theinjustices done them during the war is a remarkable story. You can learn more about it from these books:

Shimabukuro, Robert Sadamu. Born in Seattle: The Campaign for Japanese American Redress. Seattle: University of Washington Press, c2001.

Broom, Leonard, and Ruth Riemer. Removal and Return: The Socio-Economic Effects of the War on Japanese Americans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Hohri, William Minoru. Repairing America: An Account of the Movement forJapanese- American Redress. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 1988.

Hatamiya, Leslie T. Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act Of 1988. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Maki, Mitchell T., et al. Achieving The Impossible Dream: How Japanese Americans Obtained Redress. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.

This volume examines Theodore Geisel's wartime cartoons, including his anti-Japanese caricatures:

Minear, Richard H. Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel. New York: New Press, 1999.