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A line crew at work in the Manzanar camp.

A Portrait of Japanese America, in the Shadow of the Camps

An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.
Movie poster for "Bad Day at Black Rock."

Buried in the Sand

On John Sturges’s “Bad Day at Black Rock” and Japanese America.
Collage of newspaper clippings with three images of Japanese Americans.

What Reparations Actually Bought

The U.S. government’s redress program for Japanese Americans showed that the money matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters.
Mike Masaoka speaking at a Dies Subcommittee hearing on July 6, 1943, in black and white.

Asian Americans Helped Build Affirmative Action. What Happened?

The idea of proportionality has roots in midcentury Japanese American advocacy.
Phonograph records of Japanese music and a Japanese character dictionary.

Japanese on Dakota Land

Japanese Americans enter the frame of everyday Midwestern lives.
Rubble from atomic bombs in Japan

Thousands of Japanese Americans Were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945

Among the nearly half a million atomic bomb victims and survivors were thousands of Japanese American citizens of the United States.
Chicago Vietnam antiwar march

How the Asian American Movement Learned a Lesson in Liberation from the Black Panthers

In 1968, Chicago grabbed the eyes of the world when fifteen thousand Vietnam antiwar protesters vowed to shut down the National Democratic Convention.
Dr. Lawrence Matsuda portrait, 2015, Painting by Alfredo M. Arreguin

Japanese Internment, Seattle in the 50s, and the First Asian-American History Class in Washington

Lawrence Matsuda talks about his family history, his experiences of discrimination, and his work in bilingual and Asian American representation in education.
Artwork depicting the Manzanar War Relocation Center sign.

Souvenirs From Manzanar

The daughter and granddaughter of a former internee return to the notorious WWI-era detention site for Japanese-Americans.

The Forgotten Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii

A dark chapter in the history of religious persecution.
Young Japanese American girl Yoshiko Hide Kishi. Tom Hide Collection, Washington State University Libraries' MASC.

The Complex Role Faith Played for Incarcerated Japanese-Americans During World War II

Smithsonian curator of religion Peter Manseau weighs in on a history that must be told.

Japanese American WWII Incarceration

FDR cited military necessity as the basis for incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans.
A drawing of a crowd of people standing around the Wakasa stone in a crate.

The Recollector

How the Wakasa stone, a memorial to a Japanese man murdered in a Utah internment camp, became the flash point of a bitter modern dispute.
Painting of abstract lines obscuring faces on the cover of "Feeling Asian American" by Wen Liu.

Racial Hierarchies: Japanese American Immigrants in California

The belief of first-generation Japanese immigrants in their racial superiority over Filipinos was a by-product of the San Joaquin Delta's white hegemony.
Japanese American community leaders Tom Yamaski, Ted Okahashi, and Karl Yoneda, who holds his son, Tommy, at a meeting at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in Owens Valley, Calif. on May 5, 1942. Yoneda's wife, the activist Elaine Black Yoneda, who was not Japanese, also spent time in the camp.
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On Loving Day, Remember the Families Separated by the U.S.

During Japanese-American incarceration, what happened to mixed-race families and individuals?
Collection of colorful, small wooden birds with museum tags.

The Untold History of Japanese American Bird Pins

They were one of the most ubiquitous crafts to come out of Japanese incarceration camps. But few knew their back story — until now.
Books, diaries and poetry collections from the Issei Poetry Project.

Issei Poetry Between the World Wars

The rich history of Japanese-language literature challenges assumptions about what counts as U.S. art.

UC Berkeley Student Brings to Light Stories of LGBTQ+ Japanese Americans Incarcerated During WWII

A UC Berkeley student’s award-winning research shines a light on LGBTQ+ life in Japanese American concentration camps during World War II.
Barbed wire, and participants on the 2014 community pilgrimage to Tule Lake.

Why the Language We Use to Describe Japanese American Incarceration During World War II Matters

A descendant of concentration camp survivors argues that using the right vocabulary can help clarify the stakes when confronting wartime trauma
Yoshitaka Watanabe family photo: from left Yoshitaka Watanabe, Toshiko, Masao, Kimiko, Tabo, Shigeo, Shizue Watanabe.

No, My Japanese American Parents Were Not 'Interned' During WWII. They Were Incarcerated.

The Los Angeles Times will no longer use "internment" to describe the mass incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.
A crowd of Japanese Americans behind the barbed wire of an internment camp.
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How a 1944 Supreme Court Ruling on Internment Camps Led to a Reckoning

An admission of wrongdoing from the U.S. government came later, but a Supreme Court ruling had lasting impact.
Man training under water with scuba gear.

Remembering the World War II Frogmen Who Trained in Secret off the California Coast

Recruits learned the arts of infiltration, sabotage, and survival at a hidden base on Santa Catalina Island.
Sign that reads "Instructions to all persons of Japanese ancestry living in the following area"

Memory Work: Reading and Writing Japanese American Incarceration

What new possibilities might arise if we were to consider history as ongoing memory work, rather than a set narrative of progress or as singular “truth”?
An American soldier guards a Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, Calif., on May 23, 1943.
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Is it Possible to Condemn One Empire Without Upholding Another?

The danger of making wars into moral crusades.
Masked Japanese Internment Camp Prisoner

Ask a Historian: Did Japanese Americans Have Access to Vaccines in WWII Incarceration Camps?

Shibutani, Haruo Najima, and Tomika Shibutani reported that the vaccination lines stretched as long as 200 yards. “The conditions were atrocious.”
Collage of photos: author's grandfather, Shigeki, in his army uniform; his house; an internment camp.

My Family Lost Our Farm During Japanese Incarceration. I Went Searching for What Remains.

When Executive Order 9066 forcibly removed my family from their community 80 years ago, we lost more than I realized.
Ansel Adams photograph of a baseball game with the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background.

An American Landscape

In 1943, Ansel Adams traveled to photograph Manzanar—one of the ten internment camps that together detained 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.
Japanese migrants gather in Lima, Peru, in December 1941

America’s Forgotten Internment

The United States confined 2,200 Latin Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. They’re still pushing for redress.
Thirteen incarcerated children at Manzanar's Children's Village.

Manzanar Children’s Village: Japanese American Orphans in a WWII Concentration Camp

In June 1942, Kenji and just over one hundred other children were taken from their parents and relocated to Manzanar.
Aerial view of Japanese internment camp barracks

Social Science as a Tool for Surveillance in World War II Japanese American Concentration Camps

Edward Spicer's writings indicate an awareness of the deeply unjust circumstances that Japanese Americans found themselves in within Japanese internment camps.

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