Search the Media Repository
Discover the curated images, videos, and primary sources featured throughout Foundations and Futures
History is more than just text on a page; it is the photographs, voices, and artifacts of the people who lived it. The images and recordings featured across Foundations and Futures are part of a meticulously curated media repository. Whether you are building a lesson plan or investigating an artifact, you can use this database to trace the provenance of our media: discover who created an asset, the historical context behind it, and how it can be used to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander experiences into your classroom.
Multimedia
Chapters
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Laborers at the Tule Lake Agricultural Field
Given wartime food rationing and labor shortages, Japanese Americans, like these Tule Lake inmates, labored in nearby agricultural fields to raise crops to feed themselves.
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Waiting for the Detention Centers
During the spring and summer of 1942, Japanese Americans, like this family in Hayward, California, boarded buses and trains bound for government detention centers. They tied tags with their names and government-assigned family numbers onto their belongings and the clothing they wore.
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Rafu Yossai Gakuen
Japanese American-owned businesses, like this sewing school in Los Angeles’ “Little Tokyo,” clustered in Japantowns on the West Coast.
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Matsuura Company Tailors
Japanese American-owned businesses, like this tailor shop in Los Angeles’ “Little Tokyo,” clustered in Japantowns on the West Coast.
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Yuka and Michi Yasui
Yuka (left) and Michi (right) Yasui, circa 1929, were raised to appreciate their Japanese heritage. Yuka also took tap and ballet lessons. Michi took piano lessons. Both girls performed publicly, even appearing on a Portland radio program, Stars of Tomorrow.
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Japanese Community Hall Christmas pageant in Hood River, Oregon
Christmas pageant inside the Hood River Japanese Community Hall, circa 1931.
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Terminal Island Cannery Workers
Japanese American women leaving work at a fish cannery on Terminal Island. Issei established fishing communities there and in San Diego and Monterey, California.
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City Market of Los Angeles
Issei farmers and businessmen founded the City Market of Los Angeles in 1909 to sell and promote the produce Japanese farmers raised. Similarly, Issei growers established the Southern California Flower Market in 1912, the first major wholesale flower market in Los Angeles.
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“Japs Bring Frightful Disease”
This photo accompanied a 1905 article in the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper that inaccurately characterized Japanese immigrants as disease carriers who were threats to public health.
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Japan to Hood River Valley Map
Map pinpointing the area from which Masuo and Shidzuyo immigrated and also pinpointing the Hood River Valley.
