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Japanese Americans - Perspectives on Trans-Pacific Relations, WWII Internment, Meaning of Loyalty, Motherhood & Childhood, and Labor at Seabrook

Background information on the incarceration of people of Japanese descent during the World War II.

Primary Source Material & Archives

 The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. Publishes related resources on Japanese Amerian Issues, including new books, films, etc. including Japanese-American resistance during the Japanese-American internment.

Commission on War Time Relocation and Internment of Civilians (1982-1983). Justice Denied. NEW. This is a recently digitized report by the National Archives.

DENSHO is an organization that documents and preserves testemonies and other material of Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated during the World War II. 

Invisible Restraints: Life and Labor at Seabrook Farms is a digital exhibition in the New Jersey Digital Highway created by the students enrolled in Andy Urban's course "Public Histories of Detentions and Mass Incarceration" during fall 2015 semester at Rutgers, New Brunswick.

JACL: Japanese American CItizens League The website also publishes the online version of their newsletter Pacific Citizen, including back issues from 1929.

JANM: Japanese American National Museum Collections Online features selected highlights from the museum's permanent collection such as:

  • Clara Breed Collection.  Clara Estelle Breed was the Children's Librarian at the San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. This site includes the correspondence between young library users in camp and Ms. Breed. It also includes some films. 
  • Estelle Ishigo Collection. The online collection of Estelle Peck Ishigo (1899-1990) covers life in the Ponoma detention center in California and in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp during the war. It includes 120 drawings, sketches and watercolors.

Japanese American Veterans Association

Japanese American Voice covered extensively the memorial controversy. The memorial in Washington D.C. honors the servicemen of the 442nd Regiment. The controversy was over Mike "Moses" Masaoka's contibutions to the Japanese American community during the internment. 

Japan Society of New York was one of the pioneer cultural exchange in the early 20th century and as racial and political tensions worsened in the 1920s and1930s, the Society refused to take a politcal stance, preferring the strategy of education and advocacy. See publication online Japan Society: Celebrating a Century, 1907-2007

JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives includes primary sources, timeline, lesson plans on the topic of Japanese internment. 

Library of Congress / Immigration /Japanese introduces teachers ahd students resources on the topic of the Japanese immigration. 

Musical Allegiance the section Japanese American Internment lists a number of significant sources.

National Archives has a portal Japanese Americans pointing to a wealth of resources on the topic, including digitized collections.

Nikkei For Civil Rights and Redress formerly known as National Coalition for Redress/Reparations, actively participates in the areas of civil rights as well as continued commitment to redress for Japanese Americans and Japanese Latin Americans. 

Photos of Manzanar, War Relocation Center for Japanese Americans

Sites of Shame presents a map with the location of the incarceration campus, assembly centers and other facilies used to detain people of Japanese ancestry. 

Yutah Nippo (1914-1991) was a Japanese American newspaper published in Salt Lake City, Utah founded by  the issei Uneo Terasawa (1881-1939). Terasawa began the Japanese language daily with the Buddhist orientation and built a circulation of over 800 within its first year. In 1927, the Nippo  acquired the Rocky Mountain Times that had a Christian orientation and in 1932 changed from daily to publishing three times a week. Since it was located outside the West Coast restricted area, the Nippo is one of three Japanese American newspapers in the continental United States that published through the World War II years.