Resources
Internment Experience Photo Sources
- Library of Congress
- National Archives & Records Administration
- Dorothea Lange
- National Archives Catalog
- Ansel Adams
Internment Experience Text Sources
(Please note that this section includes PDFs. To view PDFs, please download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader.)
Introduction
- History.org: Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066
- Japanese-American Relocation
- Japanese Americans at Manzanar
- The World War II Japanese American Incarceration: An Annotated Bibliography of the Materials Available in the California State Archives by Karen Origel Anne Woo-Sam
- California Museum Exhibit: Uprooted! Japanese Americans During WWII
- Japanese Americans: Injustice at Home
- Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Act of Infamy Against Japanese Americans — How a Human Rights Champion Gave in to Racist Suspicion After Pearl Harbor
- Looking Like the Enemy
Section 1: Preparing for Life in the Camp
Internment Notice
Business
- Fear.org: Confiscations from Japanese Americans During World War II by Richard Lawrence Miller
- Densho.org: Looking Like the Enemy
The Family Dog
Packing
Coping
- DiscoverNikkei.org: Dysentery, Dust, and Determination: Health Care in the World War II Japanese American Detention Camps
- WSU.edu: Japanese Americans in the Columbia River Basin
Section 2: Life inside the Internment Camp
New Home
- The National Museum of American History: Daily Life in the Internment Camps
- Japanese Internment, California: Adventures in Time and Place, McGraw-Hill School Division, 2000
- NPS.gov: Japanese Americans at Manzanar
- Reflections — California, a Changing State, Harcourt School Publishers, 2007
- Heavy.com: Fred Korematsu: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
- Oregon State Archives: Threats Real and Perceived
- Learning for Justice: Home Was a Horse Stall — Concentration Camp in the Desert
Meals
- FoodFatnessFitness.com: On the Eating Practices of Japanese Americans in World War II Assembly Centers and Relocation Camps
- Cooking Up History: Japanese American Internment Foods
- Oregon State Archives: Behind the Fence: Life in the Internment Camp
- NPR.org: Weenie Royale: Food and the Japanese Internment
Illness
- DiscoverNikkei.org: Dysentery, Dust, and Determination: Health Care in the World War II Japanese American Detention Camps
- Densho.org: American Concentration Camps
- Oregon State Archives: Behind the Fence: Life in the Internment Camp
School
- Oregon State Archives: Behind the Fence: Life in the Internment Camp
- TellingStories.org: Telling Their Stories
Family
- Densho.org: American Concentration Camps
- Oregon State Archives: Behind the Fence: Life in the Internment Camp
- Tolerance.org: Home Was a Horse Stall — Pulling Together To Avoid Despair
Enlisting
- NPS.gov: Japanese Americans at Manzanar
- Japanese American National Museum: Common Ground: The Heart of Community
Loyalty Oath
- BlogWalker.Edublogs.org: Tule Lake Internment Camp — From First-Hand Accounts
- Densho.org: No-No Boys
- NPS.gov: Japanese Americans at Manzanar
- Denaturalization Act of 1944/Public Law 78-405
- Densho.org: Loyalty Oath/Questions 27 and 28
Section 3: Life after the camp
Returning home
Racism
- Junior Scholastic Lesson Plan: “We Are Americans Too!”
- WWII Propaganda: The Influence of Racism
- Patriotism and Prejudice — Japanese Americans and World War II
After the War
Happy Homecoming
Rejoin Society
- Mitsuye Endo — Densho.com
- The Supreme Court Ruled Wrong, Then Right, on Japanese American Internment
- SacBee.com: Japanese American internment case cited today in government actions
Move to Japan
- Densho.org: Joe Kurihara
- JStor.org: In Defense of Justice: Joseph Kurihara and the Japanese American Struggle for Equality
- JHU.edu: Gordon Hirabayashi and Joseph Kurihara: Wartime Resisters of Conscience
- In Defense of Justice: Joseph Kurihara and the Japanese American Struggle for Equality
For More Information
Read more about the Japanese American internment during World War II at these resources:
- At 92, a Japanese-American Reflects On the Lessons of Internment Camps. National Public Radio interview with Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga who was a high school student when the Pearl Harbor attack occurred and was later sent to Manazar. Includes 3:41 minute audio recording.
- California State University Japanese American History Digitization Project. A collaborative digital history project of the California State University Libraries consisting of selections from their larger physical collections, including oral histories, photographs, letters, art work, publications and other documents.
- Children of the Camps. A Public Broadcasting System documentary captures the experiences of six Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined children to internment camps during World War II. Includes details on the project that created the documentary and how to create similar workshops.
- Densho Digital Archive & Densho Digital Repository. The Densho organization’s mission is “to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II.” The Digital Archive contains an extensive collection of interviews while the Digital Repository holds images and documents.
- Densho Encyclopedia. A cross-referenced and indexed resource for Japanese American relocation materials. The site, pulled from materials collected by Densho, includes still and moving images, documents, databases and excerpts from oral history interviews as well as articles and references to other materials documenting the relocation experience.
- Executive Order 9066 (1942). Full text of the Executive Order that resulted in the relocation and internment of Japanese Americans.
- Japanese American National Museum – Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp. Materials collected by Clara Estelle Breed, the Children's Librarian at the San Diego Public Library who distributed stamped and addressed postcards to her young friends being sent to camps, asking them to write to her and describe their life.
- Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive at Calisphere. The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment, including personal papers and images, U.S. War Relocation Authority materials and personal histories of those who lived or worked in the camps.
- National Japanese American Historical Society — Research. The historical society collects Japanese American World War II military, incarceration camp and pre-war ephemera and has additional links to resources related to their collections.
- National Parks Service: Japanese Americans at Manzanar. The official website for the Manzanar National Historic Site, one of the internment camps in California. The site includes a timeline of events, images, and contextual information. Among those who photographed the internees at Manzanar are Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange.
- Smithsonian Natural Museum of American History’s Our Story – Daily Life in the Internment Camps. Quotations and images illustrate life in a World War II internment camp and questions allow the reader the opportunity to reflect on life after the camps’ closure.
- Southern Poverty Law Center, Teaching Tolerance – “Home Was a Horse Stall”. A true story about the internment of a Japanese American family, the Kataokas, during World War II.
- Telling Their Stories: Oral History Archives Project. Read, watch, and listen to high school students at the Urban School of San Francisco conduct and film interviews with Japanese Americans interned during World War II.
- The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History – A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution. More than 800 archival photographs, publications, original manuscripts, artworks, and handmade objects comprise the “More Perfect Union” collection to tell the story of the Japanese American experience.
- University of Southern California Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive, 1941-1946. Photographs from the Hearst Collection of the Los Angeles Examiner document the relocation of Japanese Americans in California during World War II.