Week 10: Spring Break
Week 11: March 21, 2017. The West at War: Homefront and the Pacific
March 23, 2017. Life in the Camps: Japanese America Incarcerated
- Sone, Monica, Nisei Daughter (1979)
- *Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and Presidential Letter from William Jefferson Clinton
- Navajo Code Talker Dictionary [Warning: although this is from the Department of Defense, the Code Talkers used racial slurs in codes]
Primary Sources
Evacuation instructions for Japanese Americans “relocated” or imprisoned in Tanforan.


World War II in the West & Pacific Gallery










Delgado, Manuel, 1924-1999, Artist
Date: 1943 or 1944

Weekly Assignment
The protagonist in Nisei Daughter continually grapples with her national identity versus her racial identity. Identify three of these moments in the text. What literary techniques does Sone use in her autobiography to convey this conflict to the reader? How does she situate this struggle in larger historical contexts? |
Multimedia [Note some of these oral histories use the same opening frame sequence in their playlist, but when you click on them individually they are different].
Impact of the Alien Land Laws in California – Eiichi Edward Sakauye Oral History
Cherry Kinoshita – Oral History
Oral History – Fumiko Hayashida
Oral History – Tsuguo “Ike” Ikeda
Oral History – Kara Kondo
President Roosevelt Declares War
Rosie the Riveter Homefront Oral History Project
BBC History of WWII Hiroshima
BBC History of World War II Hiroshima [Higher quality available on Netflix]
Want to learn more? Check out the following:
- Eduardo Obregon Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. (2003)
- Brian Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment (2008)
- May Sky: There is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku (Sun & Moon Classics)