Common Read: 2020-2021 When the Emperor Was Divine: Additional Resources

Educator Resources, National Archives

Lesson plans, Library of Congress

Educator Resources

Lesson plans, Smithsonian Education

A downloadable teacher’s guide for the PBS Children of the Camps documentary and educational project. The video is available on Amazon Prime.

A rare set of photographs by photographer Ansel Adams (1902-84), documenting Japanese Americans interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center, has been added to American Memory, the Library's Web site of more than 7 million items from the Library of Congress and other repositories. The Ansel Adams collection is being made available during the 100th anniversary of his birth.

CSUF YA Book Reviews (Nov 28, 2012)

Book Clubbing

Peter Trachtenberg, Penguin Random House (2003)

Film about a union organizer who goes AWOL from the Army to search for his Japanese wife and child in the camps. Starring Dennis Quaid, Tamlyn Tomita and Sab Shimono. Available to rent or purchase on Amazon Prime and YouTube.

George Takei, Sulu on the original Star Trek series, is interviewed by EmmyTVLegends.org about his time in a Japanese internment camp.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, a Nebraska man named Ben Kuroki volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps. He would become the first Japanese-American war hero, surviving 58 missions as an aerial gunner over Europe, North Africa and Japan. Between his tours of duty he would find himself at the center of controversy -- a lone spokesman against the racism faced by the thousands of Japanese Americans sent to internment camps.

This PBS documentary premiered in June 2003, and is a one-hour program about the resettlement experiences of Japanese Americans after World War II.

A digital collection from the Library of Congress.

Images of over 250 letters written by children in the internment camps to Clara Estelle Breed, the Children's Librarian at the San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945.

Hear the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it, and find thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other primary source materials from immigration to the WWII incarceration and its aftermath.

Primary sources from the Digital Public Library of America

Map from the Japanese American National Museum showing the locations of the relocation centers and cities during World War II.

Documents selected from the collections of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum intended to reflect the many sides of the issue of Japanese American internment.

Digitized documents from Balch Online Resources.

Produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II, the newspapers in this Library of Congress digital collection provide a unique look into the daily lives of the people who were held in these camps.

Created in 1997 to provide access to the University of Washington Libraries projects related to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Features selected highlights from the Museum's permanent collection of over 60,000 unique artifacts, documents, and photographs.

Contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment including personal diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings; US War Relocation Authority materials, including camp newsletters, final reports, photographs, and other documents relating to the day-to-day administration of the camps; and personal histories documenting the lives of the people who lived in the camps, as well as of the administrators who worked there.

This digital collection is part of the National Archives' Archives Library Information Center (ALIC).

In Korematsu v. United States (1944), the Supreme Court, in a 6-3 vote, upheld the government’s forceful removal of 120,000 people of Japanese descent, 70,000 of them U.S. citizens. This site includes a video of "Life at Topaz Internment Camp" where Ms. Otsuka's family was interned.

These family album pages show pictures from the daily lives of the internees, in both the Canadian and American camps.

A digital archive from the University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library.

Focusing on the experiences of Japanese Americans who were placed in detention camps during World War II, this exhibit is a case study in decision-making and citizen action under the U.S. Constitution.

A digital collection from Occidental College.

A digital collection from Utah State University.

The 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up entirely of Japanese American soldiers, was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service, in the entire history of the US Military. In total, about 18,000 men served, ultimately earning 9,486 Purple Hearts, 21 Medals of Honor and an unprecedented seven Presidential Unit Citations.

The Children of the Camps, a PBS 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 film vividly portrays their personal journey to heal the deep wounds they suffered from this experience.

The website of an organization whose mission is to preserve and share history of the WWII incarceration of Japanese Americans to promote equity and justice today.

An essay by Luke Colasurdo from The Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project.

Articles and links from The Museum of the City of San Francisco.

Website of one of the World War II relocation camps now run as an historic site by the National Parks Service.

The story of John Okada’s wartime work in the U.S. Military Intelligence Service is now airing nationwide in a new film on PBS.

Website of the Japanese American WWII Internment Camp where Julie Otsuka's family was incarcerated.

A free Ancestry.com database provided courtesy of the Irei Monument Project (https://www.ireizo.com), a memorial to all persons of Japanese ancestry incarcerated during WWII in confinement sites run by the Department of Justice, U.S. Army, Wartime Civil Control Administration, and the War Relocation Authority.