Asian American History

The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS) was a research project initiated in 1942 at the University of California, Berkeley. It aimed to document and examine the mass internment of Japanese Americans by embedding Nisei social science students recruited from the Berkeley campus into selected internment sites.The collection is comprised of daily journals, field reports, life histories, and secondary research materials collected and compiled by the research staff. There is also extensive correspondence between staff, evacuees, and others.

The Japanese American Archival Collection (JAAC) ImageBase presents about 1400 images in a searchable database of selected photographs and images of artifacts related to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

This collection from the Harry S. Truman Library focuses on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The collection includes 62 documents totaling 911 pages covering the years 1942 through 1962. Supporting materials include oral history transcripts and photographs courtesy of the National Archives.

The Children of the Camps website offers historical material that supports the documentary (which is not on the website). It captures the experiences of six Americans of Japanese ancestry who were confined as innocent children to internment camps by the U.S. government during World War II.

Collection of curated primary sources from the Library of Congress.

This collection documents Americans at home, at work, and at play between 1935-1945, with an emphasis on rural and small-town life and the adverse effects of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and increasing farm mechanization. In its latter years, the project documented America's mobilization for World War II, including the resettlement of the Japanese Americans. These images were taken mostly in the spring of 1942 in California and include evacuation, selling possessions, transportation to centers, and arrival at camps.

This article is from a five-part series exploring the history of Japanese-American incarceration camps in the US during World War II and the artists who contributed to documenting that history and tried to help the people impacted.

KQED article about photojournalist Paul Kitagaki, Jr. and his work juxtaposing historic photos of interned Japanese-Americans by Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and others with contemporary images of the same people, taken by Kitagaki.

Labor Arts celebrates the publication of an important new book with this exhibit featuring images from the book, additional images from the archives, and an introduction by Linda Gordon. As you look at the images -- try to imagine what they would convey if we did not have Lange's captions beside them.

View 45 photographs portraying various aspects of interment from The Atlantic magazine.

View paintings, drawings, and more from artists who were interned.

Urban students conducted and filmed interviews with Bay Area Japanese Americans Interned During World War II. Students then transcribed each 2-plus hour interview, create hundreds of movie files associated with each transcript, and then post the full-text, full-video interviews on this public website as a service to a world-wide audience.

The Densho Digital Repository holds a wealth of visual history interviews and other materials that broadly document the Japanese American experience. These unique primary sources cover a span of history from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s with a particular focus on the World War II mass incarceration. The archive is growing as Densho continues to record life histories and collect photos and documents.

This site explores a period of U.S. history when racial prejudice and fear upset the delicate balance between the rights of a citizen versus the power of the state. Focusing on the experience of Japanese Americans who were placed in detention camps during World War II, this online exhibit is a case study in decision-making and citizen action under the U.S. Constitution.

Access a variety of primary sources relating to internment from NARA, the National Archives and Records Administration.

Search the Records of the War Relocation Authority from 1941 - 1989 from the National Archives and Records Administration.

The Topaz Relocation Center was located on 17,500 acres in the middle of the Sevier Desert just outside of Delta, Utah. Until the camp closed in Oct. 1945, over 8,000 men, women and children lived, worked, and went to school there; over 100 of its residents volunteered for and served in the U.S. armed forces.

School yearbooks and literary magazines written and illustrated by Topaz residents offer insight into the life, activities, and feelings of the Japanese Americans held there from 1942-1945. These and other items owned by Utah State University Library are being digitized as part of its Topaz Japanese-American Relocation Center Digital Collection.