Beacon Hill Boys, Ken Mochizuki (2002)
Like other Japanese American families in the Beacon Hill area of Seattle during the early 1970s, 16-year-old Dan Inagaki’s parents expect him to be an example of the “model minority.” But unlike Brad, Dan’s older brother, who has a 4.0 GPA, a college scholarship, and a white girlfriend, Dan is tired of being called “Oriental” by his teachers and frustrated that no one in his family understands how invisible he feels. Sharing Dan’s anger and isolation are his best friends, Jerry Ito, Eddie Kanegae , and Frank Ishimoto. Together, these Beacon Hill boys struggle to come of age in an America that would continue to see young Asian Americans assimilate rather than stir up the proverbial melting pot.

Extraordinary Asian Pacific Americans Susan Sinnot (1993)
Biographical information.

Farewell to Manzanar Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston (1973)
The true story of one spirited Japanese American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention- and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

The Invisible Thread, Yoshiko Uchida (1991)
Growing up between two worlds. Growing up in CA, Yoshi knew her family looked different from their neighbors. Still, she felt like an American. But everything changed when America went to war against Japan. Along with all the other Japanese-Americans on the West Coast, Yoshi’s family were rounded up and imprisoned in a crowded, badly built camp in the desert because they “looked like the enemy.” Yoshiko Uchida grew up to be an award-winning author. This memoir of her childhood gives a personal account of a shameful episode in American history.

Japanese American Journey: The Story of a People JACP Inc. (1985)
Stories of Japanese Americans who have succeeded in the US with courage and tenacity. It contains a historical section to give the reader a sense of some of the significant events that took place in the lives of the Japanese in the US.
Grades 5-8.

The Journal of Ben Uchida Barry Denenberg (1999)

The Journey Painting and Text by Sheila Hamanaka (1990)
A brief account of the harrowing experience of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. in the first half of the 20th century.

A Time to Fight Back: True Stories of Wartime Resistance Jayne Pettit (1996)
In the years between 1939 and 1945, countless children in Europe and Asia suffered the hardships and horrors of WWII. Many of these children waged their own battles against forces of evil in secret and often at the risk of their lives. Pettit has focused on eight young boys and girls caught in the web of war: a deaf-mute who rescued a downed fighter pilot, an 8-year-old Belgian boy who distributed an underground newspaper, two children–a Japanese American girl and a British evacuee–displaced from their homes, and others on both sides of the struggle whose lives were touched and changed by the conflict. This book describes the experience of these remarkable young people, each of whom found the courage to fight the enemy on their own terms.

Plays

Asian American Women Playwrights Archive, Roberta Uno/New World Theatre (1997)
Catalog listing of items in the Uno Asian American Women Playwrights
Archive housed at UMASS Amherst.

Fish Head Soup and Other Plays, Philip Kan Gotanda 1991)
Exploring the relationship among the Issei (first generation), Nisei (second generation), and Sansei (third generation), Gotanda has crafted four powerful and sensitive dramas. Japanese American family life is at the heart of the plays, from elder traditionalists and Nisei still troubled by the message of the wartime camps to women seeking new roles and brash youth seizing opportunities in a larger society.

Biographies

Beyond Loyalty: The Story of a Kibei M. Kiyota, trans. by L. Keenan (1997)
The powerful and inspiring story of a young man whose life and education were rudely disrupted by the US government’s imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII. A high school student who interned in 1942, Minoru Kiyota was so infuriated by his treatment during an FBI interrogation and by the denial of his request to leave the camp to pursue his education that he refused to affirm his loyalty as required of all internees. For this, he was sent to Tule Lake Segregation Center in northern CA–a holding pen for “dangerous” and “disloyal” individuals. While imprisoned there under deplorable conditions, Kiyota learned of a new law offering Japanese Americans the opportunity to renounce their US citizenship. Although barely old enough to do so, Kiyota took this drastic step. Throughout his four long years of incarceration, he refused to resign himself to injustices. His story shares the fury and frustration aroused by gross violations of his rights as a US citizen and shows how the painful years of internment determined the course of his life.

Citizen 13660, Mine Okubo (1983)
Mine Okubo was one of 110,000 people of Japanese descent who were rounded up into “protective custody” shortly after Pearl Harbor. This is a poignantly written and beautifully illustrated memoir of her life in two relocation centers.

Foo: A Japanese American Prisoner of the Rising Sun, Univ. of N. Texas Press (1993)
The secret prison diary of Frank ‘Foo’ Fujita, one of two Japanese Americans to have been a prisoner of war of the Japanese.

The Kikuchi Diary: Chronicle from an American Concentration Camp, the Tanforan Journals of Charles Kikuchi, Charles Kikuchi and edited by J. Modell (1993)
“How can we fight fascism,” wrote Charles Kikuchi in June 1942, “if we allow its doctrines to become a part of government policies?” Kikuchi is one of the American-born majority of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were placed in “relocation centers” in 1942.

Manzanar Martyr: An Interview with Harry Y. Ueno, S. Embrey, A. Hansen and B. Mitson (1986)
The story of a hardworking, law-abiding California citizen who, shortly after Pearl Harbor, found himself and his family incarcerated in a hastily constructed concentration camp called Manzanar. Employed as a cook in a camp mess hall, Ueno suspected that certain War Relocation Authority personnel were diverting rationed foodstuffs from the internee population for their own profit. Ueno organized the Manzanar Mess Hall Workers’ Union and reported the incriminating findings of a union-inspired investigation to the FBI. When, on the evening of 12/5/42, the accommodationist Nisei, head of the Manzanar Work Corps, was beaten by some masked internees, Ueno was arrested as a suspect by camp authorities and removed to a nearby town jail. This action set in motion a series of events culminating in a confrontation between internees and military police. When the dust cleared on the Manzanar Riot, as it has come to be known, one internee was dead, another was dying, and 10 more were wounded. Although never formally accused nor granted a hearing, Ueno was deemed a “troublemaker” and spent the remaining years of WWII in various jails, stockades, isolation camps, and segregation centers.

A Matter of Honor: A Mémoir James M. Hanley (1995)
The story of James M. Hanley’s early life and military career, particularly his years as one of the senior commanders of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in WWII and the conflict in Korea in the fifties. More than that, it is the story of the brave Japanese American (Nisei) soldiers who volunteered for military service following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – despite the widespread distrust of anyone of Japanese ancestry and the fact that they and their families were incarcerated in concentration camps. This book reveals a deep understanding of this wartime tragedy and a warm sensitivity and empathy for the Nisei who served under Colonel Hanley’s command with distinction and valor.

Noguchi East and West, Dore Ashton (1992)
The life of Japanese American sculptor and designer Isamu Noguchi was an unending spiritual and physical voyage between the two cultures of his birthright. This book maps the events of his life and the milestones of his art.

Morning Glory, Evening Shadow: Yamato Ichihashi and His Internment Writings, 1942-1945, Edited by Gordon H. Chang (1997) Yamato Ichihashi, a Stanford University professor, was one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the US. Through his writings, the book presents a comprehensive first-person account of internment life. Chang explores Ichihashi’s personal life and intellectual work until his forced departure from Stanford, examining his career, publications, and experiences in American academia in the early 20th century. He also related Ichihashi’s involvement in international conferences, including the 1922 Disarmament Conference, an involvement with later consequences. Chang closes the book with an epilogue about the Ichihashis’ lives after the war.

Promises Kept: The Life of an Issei Man Akemi Kikumura (1991)
The wife and children of the author’s father, Saburo, recall different parts of his
past and the inner turmoil that beset him for most of his life. Though his gambling habit, WWII, and incarceration in a concentration camp threaten to split the family apart, Saburo vows that his teachings and beliefs would help the family survive. They were promises kept.

The Red Angel, Vivian McGuckin Raineri (1991)
The life and times of Elaine Black Yoneda, 1906-1988.

Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman Akemi Kikumura (1981)
The moving story of the author’s mother, whose spirit and courage enabled her to triumph over hardship, loneliness, and despair familiar to all immigrants.

Visas for Life, Yukiko Sugihara (1993)
The story of Chiune Sugihara, one of the most important rescuers of Jews during WWII. Because of his bravery, an estimated 40,000 descendants of the refugees he saved are alive today. In 1939, Sugihara was sent by the Japanese government to Lithuania to open a consulate. When the Nazis invaded Poland, a wave of Jewish refugees fled eastward into Lithuania with chilling tales of German atrocities. Thousands of Polish Jews converged on the Japanese consulate, begging Sugihara for transit visas to escape Poland. Sugihara wired his government in Tokyo three times for permission to issue visas. He was denied each time. Sugihara consulted his family, who voted unanimously to help the refugees. Stating later that he had answered to a higher power than his government, Sugihara issued the visa, saving more than 6,000 lives. After the war, the Sugihara family was imprisoned for a year and a half in a Soviet internment camp in Romania. When they returned to Japan in 1947, the Japanese government unceremoniously dismissed Mr. Sugihara from the diplomatic service. Once a rising star in the foreign service, he was forced to seek part-time employment and eventually became manager for an export company. Sugihara died in 1986, virtually unrecognized for his heroic actions. Yukiko Sugihara has written a moving account of the decision to issue the visas. Through her, we can witness events that preceded those in Lithuania and the difficult years that followed.

When Justice Failed: The Fred Korematsu Story, Steven A. Chin (1993)
After the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US and Japan were at war; for over 100,000 Japanese Americans, the war brought special tragedy. One and all, they are rounded up by the US Army and imprisoned in internment camps. Fred Korematsu challenges his arrest and the treatment of other Japanese Americans during the war.

Poetry

Believers in America, Steven Izuki (1994)
Poems about Americans of Asian and Pacific Islander descent.

Camp Notes and Other Poems, Mitsuye Yamada (1992)

Drawing the Line, Lawson Fusao Inada (1997)

Legends from Camp, Lawson Fusao Inada (1993)

May Sky: There is Always Tomorrow, Compiled and translated by Violet Kazue de Cristoforo (1997)
A history and anthology of Haiku in the WWII internment camps for Japanese American citizens.

Poets Behind Barbed Wire, Keiho Soga, Taisanboku Mori, Sojin Takei, Muin Ozaki (1983)

Touching the Stones, Oregon Nikkei Endowment (1994)
This book is about 13 stones in Portland, OR. The words upon the stones are brief poems that can be read in a moment, poems that are about passing moments in time.

Fiction

The Climate of the Country, Marnie Mueller (1999)
This is the tragic and dramatic story of Tule Lake Japanese American Segregation Camp during WWII. Narrated by Denton Jordan, a conscientious objector, and his wife Esther, who live and work at the camp, it is a gripping tale of the disintegration of loyalty, love, and friendship which takes place during a disturbing piece of American history.

Death in Little Tokyo, Dale Furutani (1996)
It’s Ken Tanaka’s turn to stage a mock mystery for the Los Angeles Mystery Club, and he’s determined to do it right. Tanaka sets himself up as a fake P.I., only to have a femme fatale straight out of the movies try to hire him. Taking the case, Ken’s detecting leads him to a mutilated corpse in a Little Tokyo hotel room. The police suspect Tanaka, and to clear his name, he becomes caught up in a mystery involving the Japanese Mafia and an international smuggling scheme. From the quaint shops of Little Tokyo to a seedy strip joint, the murderer’s trail leads back to a tragic chapter in America’s past.

Go, Holly Uyemoto (1995)
Wil is one week away from her 21st birthday but wonders if she’ll ever see the day. Depressed by a breakup with her politically correct boyfriend and fortified with a prescription for lithium, she returns from college to her family - back to where the trouble all started. Through Wil’s unsentimental eyes and wry voice, we meet close-up her perfect and perfectly infuriating mother; her silent mathematician father; her legendary grandfather in his days of strength and in the years of his slow decline; her bizarrely mismatched and wildly assorted uncles and aunts; her legion of cousins who have tried by failed to live up to such names as Grace, Hope, Faith, and Joy. Determined to understand better the forces that have shaped her, Wil draws on memories of her grandparents and weaves together wisps of stories told of her elders’ experiences in WWII internment camps. As familial legends and personal truths slowly entwine, Wil knows that she must find her own threads in her family’s complicated tapestry or reconcile herself to emotional exile.

No-No Boy, John Okada (1946)
A moving novel concerning the loyalty issues of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Snow Falling on Cedars, David Guterson (1995)
San Piedro island, north of Puget Sound, is haunted by the memory of what happened to its Japanese residents during WWII, when an entire community was sent into exile while its neighbors watched.

Treadmill, Hiroshi Nakamura (1996)
This is the only novel written about life in the WWII camps for Japanese and Japanese-Americans while that singular way of life was being played out.

What the Scarecrow Said, Stewart David Ikeda (1990)
This is an epic novel about a Japanese American family that begins with the birth of its hero aboard the ship that brings his parents to the United States and ends in the aftermath of a great national shame: the internment of Americans of Japanese descent during WWII. A rich and expansive novel of family, alienation, reconciliation, and the cost of America’s war on some of its own people.

Why She Left Us, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto (1999)
This tells the story of 3 generations of a Japanese-American family whose lives are tragically affected by the Second WW when they are interned in camps in the American West. It is also a searing yet redemptive novel about a family and its secrets, secrets that grow from fierce love and terrible fear whose sources are both personal and cultural. The story unfolds like a mystery, narrated by the 4 principal characters: the innocents Mari and her brother, Eric; the complex uncle -patriarch, Jack; and the ghost of the grandmother Kaori. Why She Left Us illuminates the universal relationships between mothers and their children while evoking the power of history to affect individual lives.

Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps, Seiichi Higashide (1993). A new (2000) edition is also available.

America’s Concentration Camps during World War II: Social Science and the Japanese American Internment, Francis McCollum Feeley (1999)
Professor Feeley’s research makes a serious contribution to our understanding of the historical problems faced by Japanese Americans at the time of the Second World War and concludes, persuasively, that neo-positivist criticisms of the multi-cultural movement in America today have missed the point: that social solutions to such problems require a ‘dialectics of liberation’, involving community empowerment and voluntary multi-cultural associations linked directly to the political economy and to U.S. foreign affairs.

An Alien Place: The Fort Missoula, Montana Detention Camp 1941-1944, Carol Van Valkenburg (1995)

An American Diary, Roger Shimomura (1997)
An exhibition of paintings based upon the diaries kept by his grandmother while interned in Camp Minidoka, Idaho, during WWII.

American Patriots, Edited by Stanley L. Falk and Warren M. Tsuneishi (1995)
Personal experiences related at the 1993 MIS Capital Reunion.

Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity The Nisei generation in Hawaii, Eileen H. Tamura (1994)
Tamura examines the forms that hysteria took in Hawaii, where the Nisei (children of Japanese immigrants) were targets of widespread discrimination. She analyzes Hawaii’s organized effort to force the Nisei to adopt “American” ways, discussing it within the larger phenomenon of Nisei acculturation. Tamura offers a wealth of original source materials, using personal accounts as well as statistical data.

And Justice for All, John Tateishi (1984)
An oral history of the Japanese American detention camps.

An Artist’s View of the Japanese American Internment, Kenjiro Nomura (1991)
Sketches and paintings produced by the artist in Minidoka, Idaho.

Asian Americans and the Law: The Mass Internment of Japanese Americans and the Quest for Legal Redress (1994)

The Bamboo People: The Law and Japanese Americans, Frank Chuman (1976)
A legal history of people of Japanese ancestry in America.

Beyond Pearl Harbor, James J. Martin (1981)
Essays on some historical consequences of the crisis in the Pacific in 1941.

Beyond Words: Images from American Concentration Camps, D. Gesensway and M. Roseman (1987)
Gesensway and Roseman collected from attics, basements and college libraries prison paintings by internees, ranging from comic caricatures to desolate landscapes. A montage of paintings, drawings, oral histories, and narrative, Beyond Words recaptures the images of American’s concentration camps.

Bittersweet Passage, M. Omatsu (1992)
Redress and the Japanese Canadian experience.

Blossoms in the Desert: Topaz High School Class of 1945, Darrell Y. Hamamoto, ed.

Boyhood to War: History and Anecdotes of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Dorothy Matsue (1992)

Building A Community: The Story of Japanese Americans in San Mateo County, Gayle K. Yamada and Dianne Fukami (2003)

Cane Fires, Gary Okihiro (1991)
The anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, 1865-1945.

Changing Dreams and Treasured Memories, Wayne Maeda (2000)
A story of Japanese Americans in the Sacramento region.

The Children of Topaz: The Story of a Japanese American Internment Camp, Michael Tunnell and George Chilcoat (1996)
Based on a classroom diary. Lillian Yamauchi Hori was removed to a camp in Topaz, Utah where she taught a third-grade class that kept a daily diary. Tunnell and Chilcoat have placed the diary in a historical context, expanding on the details of daily life in a war relocation camp.

Coming To Terms: Recovering and recovering From America’s Concentration Camps, Karen L. Ishizuka (2001)

Concentration Camps in the U.S.A, Motoko Ikeda-Spiegal (1999)

Concentration Camps: North America Japanese in the United States and Canada during WWII, Roger Daniels (1989)

Country Voices, David Mas Masumoto (1987)
The oral history of a Japanese American family farm community.

Day of Infamy, Walter Lord (1957)
Day of Infamy is Walter Lord’s gripping, vivid re-creation of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor Sunday morning, December 7, 1941. The reader accompanies Admiral Nagumo’s task force as it sweeps toward Hawaii, looks on while warning after warning is disregarded on Oahu, and is enmeshed in the panic, confusion, courage, and heroism of the final attack!

Dear Miye: Letters Home from Japan 1939-1946, Mary Kimoto Tomita (1995)
These letters tell the story of a young American woman of Japanese descent who, along with over 10,000 other Japanese Americans, was stranded in Japan during WWII. The letters cover three periods: the prewar years (1939-41), the war years (1941-45), and the postwar years (1945-46), during which Tomita worked as a civilian employee for the US occupation forces pending her repatriation. She describes the conflict of competing political loyalties, gender role expectations, and ethnic identity in a voice of immediacy and authenticity that makes these intensely personal, unselfconscious letters a valuable contribution.

Death Valley- Its Impounded Americans, Ralph P. Merritt, Jr. (1987)
Keepsake publication prepared by the 38th Annual Death Valley ’49ers Encampment.

The Decision to Relocate the Japanese Americans, Roger Daniels (1975)
This book reviews the question of the need and responsibility for the distrust West Coast’s Japanese residents faced and their consequent relocation. Daniels’ analysis and documents allow glimpses into the perceptions that shaped a fateful policy.

Delayed Reactions, Roger Shimomura (1995)
A retrospective exhibition of paintings, prints, performance and installation art from 1973 to 1996.

Democracy and Race: Asian Americans and World War II, Ronald Takaki (1995)
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, was a momentous event in the lives of Asian Americans. Denied full equality for many decades, Americans of Chinese, Korean, Filipino, and Asian Indian descent suddenly found themselves valued partners in America’s great struggle to preserve its democracy. The US, desiring to forestall enemy propaganda about its race problems, felt compelled to proclaim its ethnic diversity and defend its democratic ideals. Many Asian Americans were eager to fight, hopeful that their participation would bring full acceptance into American society. For the Japanese American community, however, WWII brought intensified discrimination, loss of property rights, and internment in concentration camps, even as its young men joined the armed services and fought courageously on all battlefronts. In the words of President Harry Truman, speaking to the Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, “You fought for the free nations of the world… you fought not only the enemy, you fought prejudice, and you won.”

Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment, Brian Masaru Hayashi (2004)
During WWII, some 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and detained in concentration camps in several states. These Japanese Americans lost millions of dollars in property and were forced to live in so-called “assembly centers” surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed sentries. In this insightful and groundbreaking work, Hayashi reevaluates the three-year ordeal of incarcerated Japanese Americans. Using previously undiscovered documents, he examines the forces behind the U.S. government’s decision to establish internment camps. His conclusion: the motives of government officials and top military brass likely transcended the standard explanations of racism, wartime hysteria, and leadership failure. Among the other surprising factors that played into the decision, Hayashi writes, were land development in the American West and plans for the American occupation of Japan.

The Derelicts of Company K, Tamotsu Shibutani (1978)
Everywhere Company K went, the men forged a record of discord and misbehavior–widespread absenteeism, insubordination, intramural violence, and protests sometimes bordering on mutiny. This book describes just how Company K disintegrated. However bizarre the behavior of Company K may appear to an outsider, it becomes readily comprehensible once incidents are viewed through the eyes of the participants. This story emphasizes the way in which beliefs and sentiments–concerning the army, their leaders, and especially themselves developed.

Desert Exile: The Uprooting of a Japanese-American Family, Yoshiko Uchida (1982)
Uchida’s family story, told in loving detail, illuminates the Issei and Nisei internment experience on a personal level for the benefit of later generations. It is not a history of the decisions made during this period, but rather, it is the story of the human lives touched and molded by those decisions.

Dishonoring America: The Falsification of World War II History, Lillian Baker (1994)

Due Process: Americans of Japanese Ancestry and the United States Constitution 1787-1994, National Japanese American Historical Society (1995). This publication illustrates the unique heritage of Japanese Americans over the past 175 years.

The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation: The Japanese of Los Angeles 1900-1942, John Modell (1977)
The incorporation of an immigrant group into the American population, one of this nation’s grand historical themes, informs this volume, one of the first systematic case studies of a non-black racial group. In it, Modell analyzes the tension and fragility inherent in the special form of accommodation that the Japanese of Los Angeles adopted to deal with the particular variant of racial hostility they faced. He considers the nature of Japanese immigration to Los Angeles, the evolution of hostile attitudes toward the group, and the Japanese response to social and economic discrimination. The volume also looks at the Japanese Americans themselves, treating community organization, ethnic economy, the intergenerational breach, and finally, the group’s reactions to tensions and the war between Japan and the US. Until their carefully circumscribed world closed in on them with their removal to relocation camps in 1942, the Japanese Americans had worked diligently to find “their place” in the American social structure. They used food production, retailing, and distribution and the social roles these occupations suggested as their base for the process of “fitting in.”

The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami, Claire Gorfinkel, ed. (1996)
An authentic view of the Issei experience of exile and detention, Hatsuye Egami’s daily recordings reveal her inner thoughts. Woven into her description of the daily routine of living in Tulane Assembly Center, they convey a minute but unique piece of that catastrophic time.

Executive Order 9066, Photographs of the Japanese American evacuation. Maisie and Richard Conrat (1992)

Face of the Enemy, Heart of a Patriot: Japanese American Internment Narratives, Ann Koto Hayashi (1995)

Fading Footsteps of the Issei Compiled by Yasuo Sakata (1992)
An annotated check list of the manuscript holdings of the Japanese American Research Project Collection, particularly the Issei personal papers.

Farewell to Manzanar, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston (1973)
The true story of one spirited Japanese American family’s attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention…and of a native born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

A Fence Away From Freedom: Japanese Americans and World War II, Ellen Levine (1995)
The bombs that shattered the peace of Pearl Harbor fractured the lives of thousands of Japanese Americans. Although there was no evidence that they were a security risk, in February 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that resulted in their forced evacuation from their homes on the West Coast. First imprisoned in makeshift quarters at racetracks and fairgrounds, they then were sent to prison camps in remote areas of the country. Despite the primitive conditions, restrictions, and lack of privacy in the camps, they made these prisons remarkably livable. The Japanese Americans who tell their stories here were children and young adults at the time. They speak of the friends and neighbors who turned against them and of the brave few who didn’t. They describe how their families lost their businesses and homes and were forced to sell personal possessions at a fraction of their true value. Some of the stories tell of hurtful discrimination, others of extraordinary courage, and still others of unexpected kindness.

Fighting for Honor, Michael L. Cooper (2000)
Including excerpts from diaries, autobiographies, and military records, and illustrated with archival photos, here is the remarkable account of Japanese Americans in WWII, who, though facing shameful prejudice in their country – even when they returned home as heroes – nevertheless fought courageously to retain their honor.

Forever a Soldier: Unforgettable Stories of Wartime Service, Tom Weiner (2005)
Dramatic eyewitness accounts from the front lines, poignant expressions of love for family and country, and moments of crystal-clear insight are among the tapestry of memories tapped for this unique testament to the transforming power of military service. Drawn from the massive national collection of the Library of Congress Veterans History Project, the letters, diaries, and oral histories- from soldiers, sailors, marines, and the supporting citizens who served in WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf War- That comprise this narrative were selected by Veterans History Project historian Tom Wiener to exemplify the extraordinary service and overwhelming humility of American’s servicemen and women. These dramatic stories illustrate how, through the generations, American soldiers have answered the call to duty with a singular spirit of patriotism and how military service has transformed lives. This book is an important contribution to the understanding of war and its impact.

Go For Broke, Chester Tanaka (1982)
A pictorial history of the Japanese American 100th Infantry Battalion and the 442nd regimental combat team.

Go For Broke (1943-1993), George Nakasato (1993)
Commemorates the observance of the 50th Golden Anniversary of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) and attempts to highlight the Go for Broke tradition of the men of the 442nd.

Heartbeat of a Struggle — The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, Diane C. Fujino (2005)
On February 12, 1965, Yuri Kochiyama cradled Malcolm X in her arms as he died, but her role as a public servant and activist had begun much earlier than this pivotal public moment. Growing up in a Japanese immigrant family in California, Kochiyama was largely unconscious of race and racism. After Pearl Harbor, however, Kochiyama’s family was among those forcibly removed to internment camps, a traumatic experience that opened her eyes to social injustice. Kochiyama began her activist career in the civil rights movement in Harlem, where she met Malcolm X, who inspired her political development and the ensuing four decades of work for Black liberation, Asian American equality, Puerto Rican independence, and political prisoner defense. Heartbeat of Struggle is the first biography of this courageous woman, the most prominent Asian American activist to emerge during the 1960s.

The Heart Mountain Story, Mamoru Inouye with an essay by Grace Schaub (1997) Photographs by Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel of World War II internment of Japanese Americans.

Honor by Fire, Lyn Crost (1994)
Japanese Americans were st war in Europe and the Pacific. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, with their families incarcerated in internment camps, many Japanese American men volunteered for military service. This book tells the story of the
incredible exploits of those linguists in the Military Intelligence Service in the Pacific combined with the experiences of the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat team.

I Am An American: A True Story of Japanese Internment, Jerry Stanley (1994)
This book chronicles the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII, focusing on the experiences of one high school student, Shi Nomura, and relating them to the larger events of the period–from the history of Japanese immigration to the political and military events of the war and the outstanding service of
Japanese American soldiers.

I Can Never Forget: Men of the 100th/442nd, Thelma Chang (1991)
Touching, personal stories of Japanese American soldiers who rose valiantly above the binds of war and racism. This book captures the emotion of the times with stunning images, illustrations and numerous never-before-seen photographs.

Imaging Japanese America: The Visual Construction of Citizenship, Nation, and the Body, Elena Tajima-Creef (2004)
As we have been reminded by the renewed acceptance of racial profiling, and the detention and deportation of hundreds of immigrants of Arab and Muslim descent on unknown charges following September 11, in times of national crisis we take refuge in the visual construction of citizenship in order to imagine ourselves as part of a larger, cohesive national American community. Beginning with another moment of national historical trauma- December 7, 1941, and the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans-unearths stunning and seldom-seen photographs of Japanese Americans by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams, and Toyo Miyatake. In turn, Elena Tajima Creef examines the perspective from the inside, as visualized by Mine Okubo’s Maus-like dramatic cartoon and by films made by Asian Americans about the internment experience. She then traces the ways in which contemporary representations of Japanese Americans in popular culture are inflected by the politics of historical memory from WWII. Creef closes with a look at the representation of the multiracial Japanese American body at the turn of the millennium.

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro (2006)
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965), the noted documentary photographer, was one of a handful of white people impelled to speak out. Already a prominent photographer in the employ of the WPA, she was hired by the U.S. War Relocation Authority to photograph the process of the imprisonment of 110,000 Japanese Americans. Once she had secured her role as witness, she devoted herself to the project, working seven days a week throughout the first half of 1942.

In Captivity Prisoner of War, Philip Dark (1994)
Images from WWII.

Isamu Noguchi-Essays & Conversations, Edited by Diane Apostolos-Cappadona and Bruce Altshuler (1994)
This is the first collection of his writings, assembling material written throughout his long and varied career. From his youthful application for the Guggenheim Fellowship that led him to an apprenticeship with Constantin Brancusi, to extraordinarily articulate statements reflecting on all aspects of his work, Noguchi presents his ideas with characteristic elegance and passion.

Issei and Nisei, Ronald Takaki (1994)
In 1868, with the restoration to power of the Meiji Emperor, Japan entered a period of modernization. The government imposed new taxes to finance industrial development, and thousands of farmers were bankrupted and lost their land. To deal with this problem and to give Japan a wider view of the world, the government encouraged emigration. From the 1880s to the 1920s, large numbers of Japanese immigrants came first to Hawaii and then to the west coast of the United States. Their labor transformed California’s marshes and deserts into orchards and gardens, but they faced intense discrimination. In 1913, California prohibited Japanese immigrants from buying farmland. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that they could not become naturalized citizens. In 1924, a new Immigration Act prohibited all immigration from Asia. The story of two generations in conflict: the Issei, or first-generation Japanese Americans, who clung to their traditions for self-protection, and the Nisei, their American-born children, who demanded a place for themselves in their new country.

Issei, Nisei, War Bride, Evelyn Nakano Glenn (1986)
Three generations of Japanese American women in domestic service.

Japanese Americans Disunited, Francis Y. Sogi and Yeiichi (Kelly) Kuwayama (2000)
How a memorial to unify the Japanese American community became a symbol of disunity.

The Japanese American Family Album, Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler (1995)
Documents the lives of generations of Japanese immigrants through their own diaries, letters, interviews, photographs, newspaper articles, and personal reflections. Theirs was often a difficult history. Many faced racial prejudice, violence, and even laws that effectively stopped Japanese immigration. Nevertheless, Japanese immigrants worked hard to form labor unions, purchase land, build farms, and establish communities in many Western states. Their success often aroused jealousy and fear, spurring the proliferation of hate groups, boycotts of Japanese shops and businesses and, eventually, the internment camps of WWII.

Japanese Americans: The Formation and Transformation of an Ethnic Group, Paul R. Spickard (1996)
Illuminates the experiences and contributions of the diverse peoples who have immigrated to the US and North America.

Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress, Edited by R. Daniels, S. Taylor, and H. Kitano (1991)
The Japanese American experience from the evacuation order of WWII to the public policy debate over redress and reparations. A chronology and comprehensive overview of the Japanese American experience underscored by first-person accounts of relocation.

Japanese Americans in the Sacremento Region, Wayne Maeda (2000)

Japanese American History, Editor Brian Niiya (1993)
Produced under the auspices of the Japanese American National Museum, this new encyclopedia includes recent scholarships, oral histories, and long-neglected documentary material to give the fullest and most comprehensive coverage of the Japanese American historical experience ever published in an accessible reference format.

Japanese American Women: Three Generations 1890-1990, Mei Nakano (1990)
Describes each generation of Japanese American women by combining personal narratives with historical data, but shows the deep relationships between the generations and provides an analysis of how each generation has impacted the next.

Japanese Americans and World War II Exclusion, internment, and redress, 2nd ed. D. Hata, T. Hill, N.I. Hata (1995)

Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz, Sandra C. Taylor (1993)
This book tells the history of Japanese Americans of San Francisco and the Bay Area and of their experiences of relocation and internment. Taylor examines the lives of the Japanese Americans who settled in and around San Francisco near the end of the 19th century. Taylor looks particularly at how Japanese Americans kept their sense of community and self-worth alive in spite of the upheavals of internment. The author draws on interviews with 50 former Topaz residents and on the archives of the War Relocation Authority and newspaper reports to show how relocation and its aftermath shaped the lives of these Japanese Americans.

Journal of the West, Editor Robin Higham (1999)
Japanese relocation in the American West, published quarterly.

Justice at War, Peter Irons (1983)

Keeper of Concentration Camps: Dillon S. Meyer and American Racism, Richard Drinnon (1987)
Study of the relocation of Japanese Americans and the treatment of Indians in the US; racism in modern America.

Legacy of Injustice: Exploring the Cross-Generational Impact of the Japanese American Internment, Donna K. Nagata (1993)

Linguistic Americanization of Japanese Americans in Hawaii, Nobuhiro Adachi (1996)
A study of issues central to the linguistic experience of Japanese immigrants and their descendants in Hawaii, this book provides valuable cross-cultural information as well as a record of the fuller Japanese American experience in Hawaii.

Linguistic Change in a Unique Cohort: Isseis, Kibeis, and Nisseis in the WWII Internment Camps , Peter T. Suzuki (2005)
This essay will examine the language policies that were put into place in the two types of camps (assembly and relocation) where the Japanese and Japanese Americans were interned during WWII. The policies had differential impacts depending on whether the internees were the immigrant first generation (Issei), the second generation (Nisei), or were those American-born who then went to Japan and studied there (the Kibei.) This essay is an expansion of a 15-minute presentation that was given at the 98th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association held in Chicago, November 17-22, 1999 given by Peter Suzuki.

The Lost Years 1942-46, S.K. Embrey, ed. (1972)
An overview of the events which brought about the evacuation, life in the ten “relocation centers,” segregation and resettlement.

Ministry in the Assembly and Relocation Centers of World War II, Lester E. Suzuki (1979)

Nanka Nikkei Voices: Resettlement Years 1945-1955, The Japanese American Historical Society of Southern California (1998)
The first publication of an annual publication, featuring topics related to the Japanese American historical and cultural heritage.

Native American Aliens, Donald E. Collins (1985)
Disloyalty and the renunciation of citizenship by Japanese Americans during WWII.

Nisei Daughter, Monica Stone (1991)
A Japanese American woman tells how it was to grow up on Seattle’s waterfront in the 1930s and to be subjected to “relocation” during WWII.

Nisei Odyssey: The Camp Years (1993)

Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics, Jere Takahashi (1997)
This book makes an important original contribution to Japanese American Studies. Past studies of the Nisei generation have been premised on the assumption of generational homogeneity. In contrast, Takahashi’s study is premised on the existence of crucial subsets within the Nisei generation and presents those subsets in terms of different Nisei responses to racial subordination within a larger economic context. This is at once the strength and originality of Takahashi’s work, which explains the triumph of the accommodationist response among the Nisei during and after World War II and the emergence of Sansei militance in the late 1960s.

No Sword to Bury: Japanese Americans in Hawaii During World War II, Frankin Odo (2004)

Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience, Lawson Fusao Inada, ed. (2000) Shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were uprooted from their homes and communities and banished to remote internment camps. This collection of haunting reminiscences, letters, stories, poems, and graphic art gives voice to the range of powerful emotions with which these victims of wartime of hysteria struggled. Included are stories of those outside the camps, whose lives were interwoven with those of the internees.

Our House Divided, Tomi Kaizawa Knaefler (1991)
Seven Japanese American families in World War II.

“…Our Journey of Honor…” George Nakasato, Chairman (1993)
A booklet about the 50th Anniversary celebration of the members of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Our World Manzanar, California High School Yearbook, 1943-4 4, Manzanar internment camp, New Edition by Diane Honda (1998)

The Pacific War and Peace: Americans of Japanese Ancestry in Military Intelligence Service 1941 to 1952, C. Uyeda and S. Barry, eds.,(1991)
This commemorative booklet, compiled on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Military Intelligence Service Language School, is a brief introduction to the little-known exploits of the MIS Nisei in the Pacific war and the subsequent occupation of their ancestral land by the Allied forces.

Passing It On — A Memoir, Yuri Kochiyama (2004)
Passing It On is the account of an extraordinary Asian American woman who spoke out and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Whites for social justice, civil rights, and prisoners and women’s rights in the U.S. and internationally for over half a century. A prolific writer and speaker on human rights, Kochiyama has spoken at over 100 colleges and universities and high schools in the U.S. and Canada.

Performance: Trans Siberian Excerpts (1988)
Recent paintings by Roger Shimomura.

Personal Justice Denied Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians Civil Liberties Public Education Fund (1997)

The Politics of Prejudice, Roger Daniels (1977)
Studies the development of the anti-Japanese movement in CA from its inception in the late 19th century until its ‘victory’ in the passage of the immigration act excluding Japanese from entering the US in 1924. The author, a historian, has chronicled the story of the CA exclusionists, groups of men and women active in CA politics and society, often divided into many issues and interests but united in their desire to halt the coming of Japanese-to-American shores forever.. The passage of the immigration legislation of 1924 brought to an end the most pressing of their demands, and the Japanophobes retired temporarily, only to emerge after the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941 to demand the evacuation and incarceration of America’s Japanese.

Prisoners Without Trial, Roger Daniels (1993)

Race, Rights and Reparation, Eric K. Yamamoto and others (2001)
The balance between civil liberties and national security is scrutinized in this, the first comprehensive course book ever published to critically explore the legal, ethical, and social ramifications of the internment of Japanese American citizens during WWII, including reparation for government wrongdoing to Japanese Americans as well as its implications for other racial and ethnic minority groups.
Reflections, 3 self-guided tours of Manzanar by Manzanar Committee (1998)

Reflections of Internment, Honolulu Academy of Arts (1994)
The art of Hawaii’s Hiroshi Honda.

Reflections: Memoirs of Japanese American Women in Minnesota, John Nobuya Tsuchida, ed. (1995)
This anthology of memoirs by 14 Japanese American women in Minnesota vividly depicts how individual citizens of Japanese ancestry were uniquely affected by WWII at the personal level on account of their ethnic background and American racism, as well as how they have achieved individual success.

Remembering Heart Mountain, Western History Publications (1998)

Reminiscing In Swingtime, George Yoshida (1997)

Japanese Americans in American popular music 1925-1960.

Repairing America, William M. Hohri (1998)
An account of the movement for Japanese American redress.

Return of the Yellow Peril, Roger Shimomura (1993)
This series of paintings and photographs is intended to represent the realization of America’s worst nightmare.

Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and the Passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, Leslie T. Hatamiya (1993)
In Dec. 1982, a congressional commission concluded that the evacuation and incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans during WWII were the result of racism, war hysteria, and failed political leadership. Six months later, the commission recommended that the US government offer a national apology and payments of $20,000 each to surviving internees as a form of redress. These recommendations became law on Aug. 10, 1988, when President Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This book is a case study of the political, institutional, and external factors that led to the passage of the legislation.

Silent Warriors, Jack K. Wakamatsu (1995)
A memoir of America’s 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Storied Lives Japanese American Students and World War II, Gary Okihiro (1999)
During WWII, over 5,500 young Japanese Americans left the concentration camps to which they had been confined with their families to attend college. Storied Lives describes- often in their own words- how Nisei students found schools to attend outside the West Coast exclusion zone and the efforts of white Americans to help them. The book is concerned with the deeds of white and Japanese Americans in a mutual struggle against racism and argues that Asian American studies will benefit from an understanding not only of racism but also of its opposition, antiracism. Gary Okihiro surveyed the colleges and universities the Nisei attended, collected oral histories from Nisei students and student relocation staff members, and examined the records of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council and other materials.

The Story of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Norman S. Ikari (1997)

Stubborn Twig, Lauren Kessler (1994)
Like countless other immigrants, Masuo Yasui saw America as a land of limitless opportunity. Through intelligence and hard work, he achieved success as a businessman, orchardist, and Japanese American community leader in Oregon’s Hood River Valley. With the wife who joined him, he raised sons and daughters who became doctors, lawyers, teachers, and farmers. It should have been a classic tale of the American dream come true. But on Dec. 7, 1941, the Yasuis’ lives changed completely and forever. Following Pearl Harbor, all West Coast ethnic Japanese, many of whom were US citizens, were forced from their homes with only what they could carry and interned in vast inland “relocation camps.” Shamed and broken, Masuo eventually took his own life. The family endured, but the scars of memory remained even when they picked up the pieces of their lives and later when Masuo’s grandchildren took up the challenge of finding their identity as Americans. Stubborn Twig is their story, a story at once tragic and triumphant, once that bears eloquent witness not only to the promise but also the perils of America and the meaning of becoming and being an American.

Suspended: Growing Up Asian in America, Clifford I. Uyeda (2000)
Clifford Uyeda is a longtime activist and leader in the Japanese American community. In Suspended, he reflects upon his coming of age during the tumultuous years before and during World War II. Part meditation on the problems of race and part declaration for healing and understanding, Suspended is a thoughtful and moving account of one man’s struggle to find a place in America.

A Taste For Strawberries: The Independent Journey of Nissei Farmer Manabi Hirasaki, Manabi Hirasaki with Naomi Hirahara (2003)

Ten Visits, Frank and Joanne Iritani (1993)
Brief accounts of the authors’ visits to all ten Japanese American relocation centers of WWII.

Three Farewells to Manzanar, Jeffery F. Burton, et al (1996)
The Archeology of Manzanar National Historical Site, CA funded by the Western Archeological and Conservation Center, National Park Service, and U.S. Dept. of the Interior

Touching the Stones, Mark Sherman and George Katagiri, Editors (1994)
A book about thirteen stones in Portland, Oregon with brief poems telling the history of four generations.

Treadmill, Hiroshi Nakamura (1996)
Documentary Novel – Nakamura, along with his family, spent the war years in Salina, CA Assembly Center; Camp II of the Poston Relocation Center, Parker, AZ; and Tule Lake Segregation Center, Newell, CA. During this period, he wrote down what he was observing, experiencing, and hearing and expressed them in this novel. Nakamura captures exquisitely the thinking and mood of the people. It accurately evokes camp life's fears, anxieties, suspicions, cynicisms, and passions.

Tule Lake: From Relocation to Segregation, H.S. Jacoby (1996)
There were, in fact, two Tule Lake centers; the first was opened as a “relocation” center in May 1942; the second emerged from the first in 1943 and was known as a “segregation” center. Although they occupied the same location, the same buildings, and made use of the same facilities, the operational purposes and objectives of the two centers differed significantly. What these differences were and how they came about are the major concerns of this book.

Unlikely Liberators: The Men of the 100th and 442nd, Masayo Umezawa, translated by Peter Duus (1983)
Duus writes in rich detail about the ordeals, sacrifices, and uncertainties of the 442nd Infantry Regimental Combat Team. Her description of the ‘Rescue of the Lost Battalion’ is especially detailed and sheds much light on the controversial nature of this bloody battle. Duus tells what war is like for the innocent civilian and the individual soldier.

Uprooted Americans, D. Myer (1971)

U.S. Samurais in Bruyeres, Pierre Moulin (1993)
The incredible story of the people of Bruyeres, France and their unlikely liberators, Americans of Japanese ancestry.

The View From Within Japanese American art from the internment camps, 1942-1945, Karin M. Higa (1992)

Views from Within: The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study, Edited by Yuji Ichioka (1989)
Japanese Americans were placed in involuntary exile under the scrutiny of University of California social scientists. This book offers a remarkable variety of insights into one of the most controversial social science projects in American history.

Voices from the Camps, Larry D. Brimner (1994)
This book remind Americans of a part of their history that until recently has been ignored.

War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War, John W. Dower (1986)
In a monumental, comparative historical study, Dower draws on songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and official documents–American, English, and Japanese–to open up a whole new way of looking at the war in the Pacific. He delves into shocking and controversial issues–atrocities, the “kill or be killed” nature of Pacific combat, the Kamikaze, and Western traditions of sacrifice–to show how each side linked centuries-old patterns of racist thought to the terrifying realities of war in the modern age. He also shows how “war words,” from the savage epithets of the battlefield to the sophisticated labels of scholars and high-level strategists, contributed to a war without mercy.

We The People A Story of Internment in America, Mary Tsukamaoto and E. Pinkerton (1987)

What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? Alice Yang Murray (2000)

Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II, Gary Okihiro-essay and Joan Myers-photographs (1996)
Haunted by a visit to one of the detention camps, Myers embarked on an odyssey to record all 10 of the camps where Japanese Americans were held, from the deserts of California and the Southwest to the swamps of Arkansas. The result is a series of evocative black and white photographs of the camps as they appear today and of items left behind in them–barracks steps, guard tower footings, cemeteries, dried-up ponds and rock work from abandoned gardens, children’s toys. Historian Okihiro tells the story of the camps almost exclusively from the reminiscences of former internees, giving voice to the photographs’ stark images.

WWII Veterans Commemorative Magazine

The Yasui Family of Hood River, Oregon, Robert S. Yasui (1987)

Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps, Michi Nishiura Weglyn (1976)
Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Award in Race Relations and exposes previously unpublished material that sweeps away spurious accounts of the “military necessity” of internment to reveal the real reasons it was utilized: economic exploitation, explicit racism, and a tantalizing barter-reprisal plan.