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
Norman Mineta Portrait
In 1975, Norman Mineta was elected as the first Japanese American member of Congress from the continental US. After serving twenty-one years, he was named to cabinet positions under both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Video
2023 Crystal City Pilgrimage
Eighty years after the wartime incarceration, pilgrimages to the various concentration camp sites are perhaps more numerous and better attended then they have ever been. “Reaching Across Barbed Wire Fences” documents the 2023 Crystal City Pilgrimage.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Image
Map of Okinawa
Map of Okinawa, the largest island of the Ryukyu archipelago.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Image
2023 Okinawan Festival
Annual Okinawan Festivals in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi celebrate Okinawan American culture every Labor Day Weekend. Photo courtesy of Cliff Kimura.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Video
CWRIC Testimonies
In the summer and fall of 1981, hundreds of Japanese Americans testified before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. Their often emotional testimony became a turning point in how the community remembered the wartime incarceration.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Text
January 1971 Cover of Gidra
Published in Los Angeles and led by a largely Sansei staff, Gidra was a monthly newspaper that became the leading voice of the Asian American Movement
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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Image
Warren Furutani at a New York Rally
Sansei activists, like Warren Furutani, were inspired to fight for social change alongside other communities of color in the 1960s and 1970s. He is shown speaking at a New York rally, alongside African American and Chicano activists.
Featured in:
Japanese Americans, Module 5
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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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Image
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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Image
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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Image
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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Text
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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Image
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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Image
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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Image
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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Image
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
