Primary Sources: The 1940s: Japanese Internment

"The Bainbridge Review, a weekly newspaper edited and published by Walt and Milly Woodward, has earned national recognition for its coverage of the forced removal of more than 200 Bainbridge Island residents of Japanese descent. The Woodwards editorialized against the removal and devoted space in the newspaper to reports about their lives in the camps."

"he online collection of artist Benji Okubo (1904-1975) features sixteen paintings dating from Okubo's prolific period of the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, including several works created in Heart Mountain concentration camp, Wyoming. While Okubo's pre-war pieces demonstrate a unique blend of color juxtaposition and surrealism, his works completed in camp are notable for their commentary on militarism, isolation and political upheaval fused with a mythic sensibility. "

"The Children of the Camps documentary captures the experiences of six Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined as innocent children to internment camps by the U.S. government during World War II. " The website includes access to related historical documents.

"The online collection of Clara Breed, or "Miss Breed" as she was known by her young library patrons, includes over 300 letters and cards received by Breed from Japanese American children and young adults during their World War II incarceration." Japanese American National Museum

"Densho's mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all."

"The online collection of Estelle Peck Ishigo (1899-1990) covers life in the Pomona detention center in California and in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming camp during World War II. Includes 120 drawings, sketches, and watercolors. "
Japanese American National Museum

"The San Francisco News, for the first six months of 1942, carried almost daily reports of FBI and police sweeps, and the various proclamations, plans - and restrictions to civil liberties - issued by Lieutenant-General John L. DeWitt at the Presidio of San Francisco. "

"In an atmosphere of World War II hysteria, President Roosevelt, encouraged by officials at all levels of the federal government, authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from a fifty- to sixty-mile-wide coastal area stretching from Washington state to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in California, Arizona, Washington state, and Oregon. Although it is not well known, the same executive order (and other war-time orders and restrictions) were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States who were of Italian or German descent. For example, 3,200 resident aliens of Italian background were arrested and more than 300 of them were interned. About 11,000 German residents—including some naturalized citizens—were arrested and more than 5000 were interned. Yet while these individuals (and others from those groups) suffered grievous violations of their civil liberties, the war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were worse and more sweeping, uprooting entire communities and targeting citizens as well as resident aliens." GMU History Matters

"The King Library Digital Collections includes all of the 135 photographs in the Flaherty Collection, which document the experience of Japanese-Americans in assembly centers and relocation camps in California, Oregon, and other Western states. For additional information about using images in the collection, contact the SJSU Special Collections Department."

"Video oral histories with Japanese Americans who were students during World War II and their first-hand accounts of being incarcerated and leaving internment camps to attend college. These interviews also document the impact that these students’ wartime experiences had on their later commitments to certain causes and organizations such as the NSRCF (Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund)."

"The online collection of George Hoshida (1907-1985) includes 260 drawings and watercolors drawn from his visual diary covering his incarceration for the duration of World War II in the Kilauea Military Camp and Sand Island in Hawai'i, in Justice Department internment camps at Lordsburg and Santa Fe, New Mexico, and in WRA camps in Jerome, Arkansas and Gila River, Arizona." Japanese American National Museum

"The online collection of Henry Sugimoto (1900-1990) includes 137 paintings dating from the 1930s to the 1950s. Sugimoto's works depict Arkansas, California, New York, Mexico, and France. His paintings of Fresno detention center in central California and Jerome and Rohwer concentration camps in Arkansas illustrate clearly his feelings about internment."
Japanese American National Museum

Primary source materials used in the digital exhibit "Interrupted Lives: Japanese American Students at the University of Washington"

"he online collection of photographer Jack Iwata includes 166 photographs and copy negatives taken at Manzanar and Tule Lake concentration camps between 1942 and 1945."
Japanese American National Museum

"From the spring of 1942 through 1946, the United States government relocated over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from Pacific coast states to War Relocation Centers. These collections document the relocation experience with an emphasis on San Joaquin County evacuees."

"In 2011, the Bancroft Library was awarded its first grant by the National Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program. What started as a two-year digitization project flourished into a now multi-grant digitization project digitizing nearly 250,000 primary source materials that focuses on Japanese-American experience during WWII. The selections consist of institutional records, personal documents, and formats like moving-image film, audio, maps, and artworks. Access to the digitized content is provided by the Online Archive of California, and Calisphere."

Photos and other materials related to relocation of Japanese Americans during WWII.

"contains thousands of Japanese American internment primary source materials"

"The collection consists of correspondence, magazines, newspaper and journal articles clippings, and publications from the War Relocation Authority, religious groups, as well as civil liberties organizations. It also has a series of correspondence to and from Occidental President Remsen Bird's office, and meeting minutes and other publications from the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council."
Provided by Occidental College Library

"The collections represent approximately 26.3 linear feet of archival materials and cover an enormous range of subjects central to Japanese-American life before, during, and after World War II, including immigration, the California Alien Land Acts of 1913 and 1920, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), organizations supporting Japanese Americans, redress, sports, and the U.S. Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Camps represented include Jerome, Gila River, Rohwer, Manzanar, Poston, Amache/Granada, Heart Mountain, and more. Among the archives are letters, photographs, camp publications, papers of camp administrators and counselors, certificates and other documents to prove citizenship, and school yearbooks."

"The internment of Japanese-American's during World War II continues to be a painful memory for many of our citizens, but now the stories available in this collection make vivid the daily life of this exiled community and their extraordinary patriotism and sacrifice. This collaboration between the ASU Library Arizona Collection and the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records started in 2005 and we thank them for their assistance in compiling and digitizing over 5,000 pages of bi-lingual camp newsletters, which are now text searchable in monthly cumulations. The collection includes bilingual internment camp newsletters and photographs of the Rivers camps in Arizona."

"In an opinion written by Justice Black, the Court ruled that the evacuation order violated by Korematsu was valid. The majority found that the Executive Order did not show racial prejudice but rather responded to the strategic imperative of keeping the U.S. and particularly the West Coast (the region nearest Japan) secure from invasion. The Court relied heavily on a 1943 decision, Hirabayashi v. U.S., which addressed similar issues. Black argued that the validation of the military's decision by Congress merited even more deference.
Justice Frankfurter concurred, writing that the “martial necessity arising from the danger of espionage and sabotage” warranted the military’s evacuation order.
Justice Jackson dissented, arguing that the exclusion order legitimized racism that violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. "
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1940-1955/323us214

"In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams's original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams's darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints."

"Produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II, these newspapers provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps. They include articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn. They advertise community events, provide logistical information about the camps and relocation, report on news from the community, and include editorials."

"This collection, originally in scrapbook form, features 108 photographs of friends, family, and social and sporting events in Heart Mountain concentration camp taken by Mori Shimada between 1942 and 1945.
Shimada was twenty-two years old when he and his family were forcibly removed from their home in Santa Clara, California to Heart Mountain."
Japanese American National Museum

"Stanley Hayami (1925-1945) was a student from Los Angeles who attended high school at the Heart Mountain Concentration Camp in Wyoming. Hayami left Heart Mountain in June 1944 to join the U.S. Army and was killed in combat in Northern Italy on April 23, 1945, while trying to help a fellow soldier. He was nineteen years old. "

"Native of Richmond, Oishi grew-up on the southside of town where his family operated a carnation nursery. He was part of the first group of workers to be employed by the Kaiser shipyards. Upon graduation from Richmond High, Oishi received training to become a welder and began work at Kaiser by late 1941. All of Richmond's Japanese families, including the Oishis, were forced to move to the Tanforan Race Track in San Bruno, where they stayed until being relocated to internment camps throughout the west. The Oishi were interned at Topaz, Utah. Oishi found he was able to work in a nursery in Chicago during the war, and was among the first in his family to return to their nursery in Richmond in 1944. In 1945 Oishi was drafted by the army and served at P.O.W. camps in Virginia and California. He continued to work in the nursery Commerce, Industry, and Labor up until the 1990s. Discusses: growing up in Richmond's Japanese community, attending various city schools, the cut flower Commerce, Industry, and Labor, work at the shipyards, the Japanese internment, life after the war."

"Tosh Yasutake is a Nisei (second generation) Japanese American born in 1922 in Seattle. His sister Mitsuye May (Yasutake) Yamada is a Nisei born in Japan in 1923. Their father, Jack Kaichiro Yasutake, was employed by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service as an interpreter for twenty years. On December 7, 1941, the father was arrested and interned as an enemy alien at a Department of Justice camp, along with other Issei (first generation) community leaders. Tosh attended the University of Washington before being removed from Seattle with his mother, May, and two brothers in spring 1942. The family was held at Puyallup Assembly Center, Washington, and then the Minidoka, Idaho, incarceration camp. Tosh worked as a hospital attendant and laboratory technician in Minidoka. In the first interview excerpt with Tosh, he explains his decision to volunteer for the U.S. Army in March 1943. In the second excerpt, Tosh and May recount how they received permission to travel from Minidoka to visit their father at U.S. Department of Justice internment camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, before Tosh reports for duty. While serving as a medic with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Tosh was wounded during combat in southern France in 1944. May left Minidoka to attend college in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1944, their mother and younger brother joined their father at the Crystal City, Texas, internment camp."

"The Topaz oral history project collection interviews were conducted by Sandra Taylor, of the University of Utah's Department of History. The interviews were part of her research for Jewel of the desert: Japanese American internment at Topaz (1993). Also included are correspondence, news clippings, published and unpublished articles, and research files.; The Topaz oral history project collection contains transcripts of tapes, and related transcription materials of a collection of 70 oral history interviews which document the lives of Japanese Americans who were interned at the Topaz, Utah, camp. The interviews were conducted by Sandra Taylor of the University of Utah"

"This collection of 361 black and white photographs taken by Walter Muramoto depict daily life in camp in Rohwer, Arkansas. Muramoto and his family were incarcerated in Rohwer from 1942 to 1945. "
Japanese American National Museum

"This collection focuses on The War Relocation Authority and The Incarceration of Japanese-Americans During World War II. It includes 14 photographs, 62 documents comprising 911 pages, a chronology of events spanning the years 1941-1998, excerpts from Oral Histories, and Lesson Plans." Harry S. Truman Library & Museum

"In February 1942 all Japanese Americans were ordered to internment camps.
They were viewed as a threat to US security during World War II." From the BBC

"This collection contains United States and Illinois government documents on subjects relating to World War II, including: rationing and conservation, women's work, civil defense, the Japanese interment, the development of the United Nations, and more."
Collection provided by: Illinois State Library

"The World War II Films digital collection consists of short films and news clips, primarily in black and white, documenting Allied operations and activities during WWII. In addition to footage of campaigns in Europe and in the Pacific, the films document activities on the homefront, including the efforts of African American colleges and farmers, the relocation and internment of Japanese civilians, and the victory garden program sponsored by the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense. The films are housed in Ball State University Libraries Educational Resources Collections."