February 19, 2012 marks the 70th anniversary of a dark chapter in American history; the internment of more than 110,000 citizens of Japanese descent by the United States government. One of those detention centers, the Manzanar War Relocation Center, was designated a National Historic Site twenty years ago. In this profile, former Aptos resident Dr. Masako Miura shares vivid memories of her time as an internee and physician at Manzanar in 1942.

Hear an interview with World War II veteran Grant Ichikawa, who enlisted after being relocated to a Japanese American internment camp with his family in 1942 and was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2011.

This document provides a brief overview of the political and judicial discrimination that the Japanese-American community faced during World War II, including descriptions of Hirabayashi v. U.S. and Korematsu v. U.S., and how, over 40 years later, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, sought to right the wrongs that the Japanese-American community faced.

The high school lesson uses video and written oral histories of Japanese American internees about the discrimination they faced before, during and following their internment, and their feelings about the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

This Educator Resources page includes over sixty individual biographies in the form of “ID Booklets.” Nearly all of these booklets were written by former internees or their families. The files are in .pdf format and may be downloaded and printed. Additional booklets will be added to our website as they become available.

Soon after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the imprisonment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans. They were forcefully moved from their homes to makeshift concentration camps, like Manzanar near Death Valley.

To document this process, the government hired photographer Dorothea Lange, but then impounded her photos. Many of them have never been seen or published until now. A new book features more than 100 of these stark black-and-white images, and sheds new light on this chapter of American history.

A documentary on the landmark Japanese internment case, Korematsu v. United States (1944), concerning the constitutionality of the presidential executive order 9066 during World War II.

Teaching Activity PDF. By Moé Yonamine. 18 pages.Poetry, photography, and text are used in this role play to teach about the often untold history of Japanese Latin American internment during WWII.

Teaching Activity PDF. By Katie Baydo-Reed. 10 pages.Students hold a “tea party” and a mock trial to connect with a challenging novel.

During World War II, the United States was at war with Japan. By an executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, all Americans of Japanese descent living in military exclusion zones on the West Coast were forced to leave their homes and move to internment camps.

This collection of resources is based upon the children's book, Baseball Saved Us," a selection of the Smithsonian's "Our Story" series (National Museum of American History) set during the Japanese Internment.

StacyAnn Chin performs a letter written by Japanese activist Yuri Kochiyama detailing a Japanese American's experiences with internment during World War II.

Teaching Activity PDF. By Mark Sweeting. 4 pages.

After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the U.S. government sent individuals of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast to internment camps. The Hirabayashi and Korematsu cases challenged the government’s right to restrict the liberty of this population of citizens and noncitizens. The Supreme Court upheld the government’s actions in each case. Three Supreme Court Justices discuss these landmark cases—specifically, the balance the court tries to strike between individual rights and national security in times of war in light of the Constitution’s provision that “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”                                  

Farewell to Manzanar begins on the first Sunday in December of 1941, the day Japan launched a surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It is a day that changes Jeanne's life and the lives of everyone in her family.
According to the authors, Farewell to Manzanar is a "web of stories tracing a few paths, out of the multitude of paths that led up to and away from the experience of the internment." That web of stories links Jeanne's search for her own unique identity to the wrongs done to Japanese Americans during the war.
The accompanying study guide encourages students to think about the following central questions: 
How do our confrontations with justice and injustice help shape our identity? How do those confrontations influence the things we say and do?

This lesson plan uses the story “Hidden Memory” by professional storyteller Anne Shimojima. In this story, Shimojima tells about the experience of her family in the United States, especially during the time of World War II when some of her family were sent to the internment camps.

Produced during WW2 by the War Relocation Authority, which was responsible for the forcible internment of about 110,000 people of Japanese descent following the U.S. entry into the war. The film offers a justification of the decision to force these people, most of whom were U.S. citizens and none of whom were found guilty of any crime, from their homes to relocation camps in remote areas.
Government-produced film attempting to defend the massive internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II.

This is a Primary Source Set dedicated to the topic of the Japanese Internment during World War II under President Roosevelt.

This program guides the viewer through the works and contexts of ethnic writers from 1945–1965. Starting with the works of Ralph Waldo Ellison, Philip Roth, and N. Scott Momaday, we explore the way writers from the margins took over the center of American culture.

America is enveloped in total war, from mobilization on the home front to a scorching air war in Europe. Professor Miller's view of World War II is a personal essay on the morality of total war, and its effects on those who fought, died, and survived it, including members of his own family

In Part I, Cathie Wright-Lewis and her class explore the tradition of spoken word and the works of poet Abiodun Oyewole. In Part II, Sandra Childs’s class studies the history of Japanese-American internment in the United States through the works of Lawson Fusao Inada. Inada reads his poetry to the students and addresses their questions.