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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Image
Opening Day at Koharu Restaurant
Despite the forced exclusion of Japanese Americans during World War II, Little Tokyos reemerged in most of the major cities on the West Coast. Koharu Restaurant circa 1959 showcase strong communities in areas like Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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Champion Women’s Bowling Team
Embracing American hobbies, bowling became a popular community activity among Nisei and Sansei after World War II. In Los Angeles, the women’s team at the Holiday Bowl were no exception.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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Sansei and African American Youth Football Players
Many Sansei grew up in multiethnic communities after the war. This image shows a banquet sponsored by the Seattle Nisei Veterans Committee for a youth football team, Seattle, 1953.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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1968 Political Campaign Pamphlet
Japanese Americans in the Democratic Party became dominant figures in Hawaiʻi politics after Hawaiʻi became a state in 1959. This 1968 campaign pamphlet for Hawaiʻi Democratic Party candidates highlights Patsy Mink, Spark Matsunaga, Daniel Inouye, and Hubert Humphrey.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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Naturalization Certificate of Taye Sasano
Taye Sasano was one of thousands of Issei who applied for and received naturalized citizenship after the passing of the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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Video
Incarcerees Return to Southern California
Due to housing shortages in Southern California, thousands of Japanese Americans newly released from the concentration camps lived in federal trailer camps upon their return in 1945–47.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 4
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Manzanar Entrance
While Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes, the government used euphemisms to downplay the violation of their civil rights. The entrance to the Manzanar War Relocation Center even appears welcoming, reinforcing the misleading idea that Japanese Americans were ‘evacuees.’
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Video
“A Challenge to Democracy”
This clip from a 1944 WRA propaganda film provides a clue as to how Japanese American military service was portrayed to both Japanese American and non-Japanese American audiences.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Nisei Soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team Funeral
Funeral for soldier killed as a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Nisei Soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team Marching
Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team fought in Germany, Italy, and France.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Nisei Soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team
Nisei soldiers of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe, 1944–45, became one of the most highly decorated units in American military history for its size and length of service.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Mass Trial Hearing
Sixty-three Nisei who resisted the draft while incarcerated at the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, camp were tried and convicted in the largest mass trial in Wyoming’s history. This image shows the trial of Nisei draft resisters, Cheyenne, Wyoming, June 12, 1944
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Video
Heart Mountain Concentration Camp
Home movie footage from the Heart Mountain concentration camp in Wyoming captures the stark desert landscape where Japanese American families tried to create a sense of normalcy during their forced removal.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Citizens Behind Barbed Wire
A page from a scrapbook by Kiku and Mary Masaoka, who were incarcerated in Santa Anita, California and Jerome, Arkansas. Despite administrative attempts to make life as normal as possible, inmates never forgot they were being held behind barbed wire.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Waiting For the Mess Hall
Photographed by Dorothea Lange, this image shows the long lines inmates had to wait in before entering the mess hall at Manzanar, July 1942. Many recounted the many lines they had to endure as part of camp life
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Camp Maintenance
Concentration camps were run as if they were small towns. Many incarcerees staffed these positions, receiving one-tenth of what white WRA staffers were paid for similar work. This image shows the stark reality for Heart Mountain incarcerees in Wyoming.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Miné Okubo’s Community Toilets at the Tanforan Assembly Center
Nisei artist Miné Okubo documented her family’s incarceration in drawings that were later published as a book titled Citizen 13660 (1946). This image illustrates the lack of privacy in communal bathrooms at the Tanforan Assembly Center, 1942.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Forcibly Removed Japanese Americans Bound for Manzanar
Thousands of Japanese Americans were forced from their homes, uncertain of their futures. In this image, they gathered at Old Union Station in downtown Los Angeles in May 1942, where they were transported to Manzanar concentration camp in central California.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Kilauea Military Detention Camp by George Hoshida
A young Issei artist and leader in the Hilo, Hawaiʻi, Japanese American community, George Hoshida documented his internment following his arrest and detention in Kilauea Military Detention Camp, 1942
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
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Video
Interview with Kay Uno Kaneko, Hana Shepard, and Mae Matsuzaki
By December 10, nearly 1,300 such men had been detained, with another 1,000 arrested by February 1942. George Uno was among them. Interviewed by filmmaker, Loni Ding, Hana Uno Shepard recalls the arrest and internment of her father.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 3
