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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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Mitsuye Endo
Mitsuye Endo, an American citizen, was relocated to Tule Lake Relocation Center and then at Topaz Relocation Center. In 1944, attorneys argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on her behalf. The court rules that the War Relocation Authority may have to detain other classes of citizens, but it has no authority to subject citizens who are concededly loyal to its leave procedure.
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Fred Korematsu
From left to right, top to bottom: Min Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsuye Endo brought lawsuits challenging government violations of Japanese Americans’ civil liberties.
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Gordon Hirabayashi and Bill Schmoe
From left to right, top to bottom: Min Yasui, Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu, and Mitsuye Endo brought lawsuits challenging government violations of Japanese Americans’ civil liberties.
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Heart Mountain Fair Play Committee
Government agents arrested sixty-three Nisei men incarcerated at the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, camp who resisted the military draft to protest the loss of their constitutional rights.
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Nisei Students at Swarthmore
Aided by the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council, Nisei left camps to attend colleges outside the exclusion zone. By the end of the war, 4,300 Nisei had left camps for colleges, including these four Nisei with classmates at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania.
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Nisei Farm Workers in Montana
Labor shortages compelled farmers to ask the government to allow Japanese Americans to temporarily leave the camps for agricultural work in Utah, Montana, Idaho, and other states. In this photo, Nisei laborers learn from a Montana farmer how to harvest sugar beets.
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The 442nd Regimental Combat Team
Original caption: Japanese-American troops climb into a truck as they prepare to move their bivouac area. 2nd Battalion, 442nd Combat Team, Chambois Sector. France
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Tule Lake jail
A jail was built at Tule Lake which was co-managed by the border guards and WRA wardens. The building still survies today.
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Returning Seattle Family’s Garage Vandalized
This family returned to their home in Seattle from the camp at Minidoka, Idaho to find their garage vandalized.
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Riot at Manzanar headline
Walter Millsap was from 1916 to 1919 an active member of the utopian Llano colony, a socialist community which moved from its original location in California to Louisiana in 1917. Millsap was trustee of United Co-Operative Industries and head of the Llano Co-Operative Association.
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Baseball Game at Tule Lake
Baseball was a popular pastime at the WRA camps. This photo shows the opening game of the 1944 Tule Lake baseball season. Nearly half of the camp’s inmates attended the game.
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The Down Beats
Young Nisei formed bands, like the Downbeats pictured here at Tule Lake, to perform at dances and other social gatherings.
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White Shell Corsage Pin
Many women at Tule Lake collected tiny shells, the remains of mollusks that once inhabited an ancient lakebed located where the camp was built. They painstakingly cleaned, sorted, arranged and decorated the shells into elaborate creations like these pins.
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Stenographers and Clerks In Tule Lake Administrative Office
All other workers, like the stenographers in this photo taken at Tule Lake, received $12–16 a month. In contrast, white camp employees earned more than ten to twenty times as much as Japanese American workers for the same jobs.
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Dr. James Goto Examines a Patient
The government paid Japanese American professionals, like the doctor pictured here, nineteen dollars a month. In contrast, white camp employees earned more than ten to twenty times as much as Japanese American workers for the same jobs.
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Pinedale (Calif.) Assembly Center Dining Hall
Photograph shows Japanese Americans young women in waitress uniforms during forced removal of Japanese Americans to temporary concentration camps during World War II.
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Seattle Times: “Axis Spy Groups Smash in Coast Raids; 300 Jailed”
Anxious Japanese Americans feared that the government would shoot or deport the Issei leaders that the FBI had arrested.
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Homer Yasui Interview Segment 9
Hearing about the bombing of Pearl Harbor: “My heart sank down to my toes”
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Japanese Relocation Order, 1942
Issued by President Franklin Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, this order authorized the evacuation of all persons deemed a threat to national security from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland.
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“How to Tell Your Friends from the Japs”
For decades, Chinese immigrants were reviled in the United States. But China was a US ally during World War II. A December 22, 1941 Time magazine article, “How to Tell Your Friends From the Japs,” included these comparative images and the guidance that “the Chinese expression is likely to be more placid, kindly, open; the Japanese more positive, dogmatic, arrogant.” Articles like this illustrate how international politics impacted the treatment and perception of Asians in the United States.
