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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
Nihomachi Hotel in Seattle's Japantown.

Seattle’s Japantown Was Once Part of a Bustling Red Light District — Until Residents Were Pushed Out

The erased histories of the communities that built Seattle.
by Nina Wallace via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on March 18, 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
Family photo of a Japanese immigrant family.

The World's Only Samurai Colony Was Once in California

The families arrived from Japan with fanfare, most disappeared without a trace.
by Katie Dowd via SFGATE on January 26, 2021
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
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
Yoko Ono looking pensive.

Yoko Ono’s Art of Defiance

Before she met John Lennon, she was a significant figure in avant-garde circles and had created masterpieces. Did celebrity deprive her of her due as an artist?
by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on June 8, 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
Chinese miners in California

The Anti-Asian Roots of Today’s Anti-Immigrant Politics

Long before Trump, politicians on the country’s West Coast mobilized a white working-class base through violent hate of Chinese and Japanese immigrants.
by Mari Uyehara via The Nation on August 9, 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
The entrance at Camp Livingston.

Forgotten Camps, Living History

Reckoning with the legacy of Japanese internment in the South.
by Jason Christian via The Bitter Southerner on February 18, 2021
Photo of Japanese American shops with employees and bicycles in front.

When Police Clamped Down on Southern California’s Japanese-American Bicycling Craze

Because cycling was an important mode of transportation for agricultural workers and a popular competitive sport, police saw it as a way to target immigrants.
by Genevieve Carpio via Zócalo Public Square on August 26, 2019

Racists in Congress Fought Statehood For Hawaii, But Lost That Battle 60 Years Ago

It took more than five decades for advocates of statehood to vanquish white supremacists in Washington.
by Sarah Miller Davenport via The Conversation on March 18, 2019

The Surprising History of the Fortune Cookie

Searching for the roots of an American classic.
by Soleil Ho, Blue Delliquanti via The Nib on January 4, 2019

Strikers, Scabs, and Sugar Mongers

How immigrant labor struggles shaped the Hawaii we know today.
by Natasha Varner via Jacobin on August 22, 2017
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
Painting of Noritoshi Kanai and Harry Wolff Jr. and various sushi preparations, by Yuko Shimizu.

How Two Friends Sparked L.A.’s Sushi Obsession — and Changed the Way America Eats

An unlikely pair of Southern California businessmen paved the way for the sushi revolution in Los Angeles, upending American dining — and their own lives.
by Daniel Miller via Los Angeles Times on May 3, 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
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
A view of “Battleship Row” during or immediately after the Japanese raid on Dec. 7, 1941. The capsized USS Oklahoma (BB 37) is in the center, alongside the USS Maryland (BB 46).
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What We Forget When We ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’

Seeing the war from the perspective of citizens of U.S. colonies sheds new light on the impact of World War II.
by Eri Kitada via Made By History on December 7, 2021
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.
by Natasha Varner via University Of Arizona Press on July 2, 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

Asian Americans Are Still Caught in the Trap of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype

Generations of Asian Americans have struggled to prove an Americanness that should not need to be proven.
by Viet Thanh Nguyen via TIME on June 26, 2020

Walking with the Ghosts of Black Los Angeles

"You can't disentangle blackness and California."
by Ismail Muhammad via Literary Hub on September 20, 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

The Johnson-Reed Act of May 24, 1924

The worldview laid out in the 94-year old law is still the foundational principle of American immigration policy today.
by Justin Broubalow via We're History on May 24, 2018

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
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Foreign Born Population 1850-2010

An interactive map of immigrant populations in the United States.
by Ed Ayers, Robert K. Nelson, Scott Nesbit, Justin Madron, Nathaniel Ayers via American Panorama on December 1, 2015
Jennifer 8 Lee.

The Hunt for General Tso

The origins of Chinese-American dishes, and the spots where these two cultures have combined to form a new cuisine.
by Jennifer 8 Lee via TED on July 1, 2008

Border Patrol - Our Oral History

A compilation of interviews with former U.S. Border Patrol officers who served from the 1930s-1960s.
via Border Patrol Museum on May 16, 1987

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