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Japanese American National Museum Volunteer Barbara Keimi stamps the Ireichō

The Japanese American National Museum Is a Site of Remembrance and Belonging

The Japanese American National Museum embraces the Japanese-American experience in all its permutations.
by Seph Rodney via Hyperallergic on April 2, 2025
The setting sun illuminates the site of the Topaz Relocation Center, a federal prison camp in Millard County, Utah.

The Murder, the Museum and the Monument

How the discovery of a long-lost monument shattered trust between a Japanese American community and the museum built to preserve its history.
by Kori Suzuki via High Country News on April 1, 2025
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.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on June 4, 2024
Movie poster for "Bad Day at Black Rock."

Buried in the Sand

On John Sturges’s “Bad Day at Black Rock” and Japanese America.
by Jonathan van Harmelen via Los Angeles Review of Books on July 27, 2023
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.
by Morgan Ome via The Atlantic on June 10, 2023
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.
by Ellen Wu via Slate on November 2, 2022
Phonograph records of Japanese music and a Japanese character dictionary.

Japanese on Dakota Land

Japanese Americans enter the frame of everyday Midwestern lives.
by Patti Kameya via Patti Kameya on February 14, 2022
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.
by Nina Wallace via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on August 4, 2021
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.
by Nobuko Miyamoto via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on July 12, 2021
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.
by Lawrence Matsuda, Casey McNerthney via History Link on June 16, 2021
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.
by Miyako Pleines via HyperText on December 20, 2020
A Japanese interment camp used during World War II in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The Forgotten Internment of Japanese Americans in Hawaii

A dark chapter in the history of religious persecution.
by Duncan Ryūken Williams via Literary Hub on February 25, 2019
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.
by Peter Manseau via Smithsonian on February 15, 2019

Japanese American WWII Incarceration

FDR cited military necessity as the basis for incarcerating 120,000 Japanese Americans.
by Natasha Varner via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on February 9, 2016
Painting by Hiroki Kawanabe titled Wide Street.

Legacies of Japanese American Incarceration

Brandon Shimoda’s book about the memorialization of Japanese internment camps also speaks to the brutal system of migrant detention that continues to this day.
by Francisco Cantú via New York Review of Books on April 3, 2025
Kimonos hanging on a clothes line at an internment camp.

The Secret History

An investigation of the US’s mass internment of Japanese Americans.
by Harmony Holiday via Bookforum on December 10, 2024
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.
by Pablo Calvi via The Believer on July 11, 2024
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.
by H. M. A. Leow, Eiichiro Azuma via JSTOR Daily on July 1, 2024
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?
by Tracy Slater via Made By History on June 12, 2024
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.
by Susan Shain via High Country News on April 5, 2024
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.
by Kenji C. Liu via High Country News on March 1, 2024

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.
by Tor Haugan via UC Berkeley Library on February 19, 2024
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
by Tamiko Nimura via Smithsonian on December 28, 2023
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.
by Teresa Watanabe via Los Angeles Times on March 16, 2023
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.
via Retro Report on October 18, 2022
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.
by Andrew Dubbins via Atlas Obscura on June 30, 2022
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”?
by Erin Aoyama via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 9, 2022
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.
by Moon-Ho Jung via Made By History on May 22, 2022
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.”
by Brian Niiya via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on March 9, 2022
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.
by Ruth Chizuko Murai via Mother Jones on February 18, 2022
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