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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
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
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
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
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
Old picture of four Japanese American girls in Manzanar prison camp.

Preserving Memories of a Japanese Internment Camp

A poignant connection between the erosions of landscape and memory at a former Japanese internment camp in California.
by Emily Troil, Maya Castronovo via Directors' Library on May 1, 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

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
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
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
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.
by Tausif Noor via Dissent on December 10, 2021
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.
by Jesús A. Rodríguez via Politico Magazine on December 5, 2021
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.
by Natasha Varner via Tropics of Meta on November 19, 2021
Picture of George W. Bush

How Memories of Japanese American Imprisonment During WWII Guided the US Response to 9/11

In the wake of 9/11, some called for rounding up whole groups of people but Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta knew the U.S. had done that before.
by Susan H. Kamei via The Conversation on September 3, 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
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
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

Roaming Charges: Super Tuesday at Manzanar

A report from the site of a former concentration camp.
by Jeffrey St. Clair via CounterPunch on March 6, 2020

California to Apologize Officially for Mistreating Japanese Americans

Nearly 60 years after FDR authorized the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, California plans to apologize for its role.
by Gustavo Arellano via Los Angeles Times on February 16, 2020

The WWII Incarceration of Japanese Americans Stretched Beyond U.S. Borders

The U.S. government orchestrated the roundup of people of Japanese descent in 12 Latin American countries, citing “hemispheric security."
by Erika Lee via TIME on December 4, 2019

The Art of Dignity: Making Beauty Amid the Ugliness of WWII Japanese American Camps

A history of Japanese Internment in America through the art produced from it.
by Lisa Hix via Collectors Weekly on December 3, 2019

We Have Been Here Before

Japanese American incarceration is the blueprint for today’s migrant detention camps.
by Brandon Shimoda via The Nation on August 21, 2019
Japanese-Americans farming in Manzanar
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A Grave Injustice

Ed Ayers visits Manzanar, the largest of the WWII-era internment camps for Japanese Americans, and speaks to those keeping the memories of detainees alive.
via Future Of America's Past on August 15, 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 woman and baby wearing tags, and people crowded into an internment camp.
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How Activists Resisted — And Ultimately Overturned — An Unjust Supreme Court Decision

And why they must resist the Court's current race-based precedents.
by Robert L. Tsai via Made By History on January 30, 2019
A Japanese American woman holds a baby at an internment camp.

‘At Least During the Internment …’ Are Words I Thought I’d Never Utter

I was sent to a camp at just 5 years old — but even then, they didn't separate children from families.
by George Takei via Foreign Policy on June 19, 2018
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