Organization of American Historians Magazine, Special Issue: “World War II Homefront,” Spring 2002: http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/ww2homefront/ww2homefront.pdf
World War II had a profound impact on the United States. The war demanded unprecedented military and diplomatic planning to coordinate strategy and tactics with other members of the Grand Alliance. It required a monumental productive effort to provide the materials necessary to fight, and it resulted in a reorientation of economic and social patterns at home. This special issue of the Organization of American Historians magazine, Magazine of History: For Teachers of History, provides a comprehensive overview of some of these factors. Historical essays describe the impact of the war on women, African Americans, and Japanese Americans, while five lesson plans explore such diverse topics as propaganda posters, historical memory, oral history, and wartime production. Additional reading and internet resources are also included.
National Museum of American History, “A More Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the U.S. Constitution:” http://americanhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/experience/index.html
This exhibition is divided into six subthemes: immigration, removal, internment, loyalty, service, and justice. Together they chronicle the Japanese experience in America from their arrival in the late nineteenth century to the U.S. Government’s formal apology for internment in 1988. A database of additional documents and objects are also available through a keyword searchable database, while the resource section offers lesson plans, a bibliography, and additional web links on the subject.
Japanese American National Museum, Smithsonian Institution affiliate:
http://www.janm.org and Smithsonian Institution, “Letters from the Japanese American Internment”: http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/educators/lesson_plans/
japanese_internment/index.html
Since its inception in 1985, the Japanese American National Museum has chronicled more than 130 years of Japanese American history—from the first Issei generation through the World War II incarceration to the present-day. In 1999, the National Museum established the Manabi and Sumi Hirasaki National Resource Center (HNRC) to ensure that the story of Japanese Americans remains accessible to everyone. The museum’s website includes several online exhibitions. Of particular interest is the online exhibition, “Dear Miss Breed: Letters from Camp” (which appears on page six of “past exhibitions” found under “exhibitions”). Clara Estelle Breed was the children’s librarian at the San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. As the U.S. entered World War II, some of the children with whom she worked were removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. This online exhibition is based on the postcards she received, and includes children’s descriptions of departure for camp, life in camp, and returning home. These are complemented by collections of audio-taped oral histories by camp survivors and a small collection of home movies from the 1940s reconfigured as Quicktime videos. Additional letters and lesson plan ideas adapted for younger learners appear in the companion website by the Smithsonian Institution, “Letters from the Japanese American Internment” (website listed above).
Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives: http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/jarda/
The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) is part of Calisphere, the University of California’s free public gateway to a world of primary sources. JARDA contains thousands of Japanese American internment primary source materials including: personal diaries, letters, photographs, and drawings. It also includes U.S. War Relocation Authority materials, such as camp newsletters, final reports, photographs, and other documents relating to the day-to-day administration of the camps, and personal histories documenting the lives of the people who lived in the camps as well as the administrators who created and worked in the camp. These materials are divided into four themes: people, places, daily life, and personal experiences, each of which includes questions to consider, a brief historical overview, recommended browsing terms, and a database of images and documents. An additional section includes three lesson plans (geared for elementary, middle, and high school respectively).
A Catalogue of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss: http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/
Most people know Dr. Seuss for his children’s books. Fewer people are aware that Theodor Seuss Geisel (AKA Dr. Seuss) was the chief editorial cartoonist for the New York newspaper PM (1940-48). This website includes more than 400 of Dr. Seuss’s cartoons from this period. Original drawings from the collection displayed here are housed at the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California, San Diego. Some 200 of these images were included in Richard H. Minear’s Dr. Seuss Goes to War (The New Press, 1999). The website is searchable by year, person, region, issue, and battle.
Library of Congress, “Ansel Adam’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar:” http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/collections/anseladams/aamsp.html
In 1943, Ansel Adams documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese Americans interned there during World War II. Adams’s Manzanar work, which he gifted to the Library of Congress in 1965, is a departure from his signature landscape photography. While many images in the collection are portraits, Adams photographed Manzanar’s daily life, agricultural scenes, and sports and leisure. This online collection also includes digital images of the first edition of Born Free and Equal, the book Adams based on his work at Manzanar.
The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, “Dorthea Lange and the Relocation of the Japanese:”
http://www.sfmuseum.net/hist/lange.html and the Library of Congress,
“Women Come to the Front,” http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/wcf/wcf0001.html:
Dorothea Lange was part of the West Coast Bohemian group of photographers. In the 1930s she was involved with the migrant farm workers program of the California Emergency Relief Administration, and later began photographic assignments for the U.S. government’s Farm Security Administration, Office of War Information, as well as the War Relocation Authority, from which these photographs are drawn. Lange’s photographs of the forced relocation of Japanese and Japanese American citizens form part of a Library of Congress’ online exhibit “Women Come to the Front” (website address listed above). To view more of Lange’s photos of Japanese internment see Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment, eds. Linda Gordon and Gary Y. Okihiro (NY: W.W. Norton, 2006).
Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Exploring Diversity Lesson Plans:
http://www.hsp.org/
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s Education Department provides two lesson plans, images, and primary documents about Japanese American interment. These include a copy of the Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 which ordered the evacuation and relocation of all Japanese and Japanese-Americans living in Oakland and San Francisco, California and two sets of correspondence. The first group of letters, from the Iawata family papers, details one family’s experiences between 1942 and 1943. The second, by Sumiko Kobayashi, describes Kobayashi’s efforts to work with the Japanese American Citizens’ League as the Philadelphia chapter representative during the 1980s. Her letters include exchanges with U.S. legislators and other politicians, fellow rights advocates, and other members of the Japanese Internment Redress movement. Look for these materials on the Historical Society website under Education, “Japanese-American Internment.”
The Seabook Educational and Cultural Center: http://www.seabrookeducation.org
To preserve Seabrook’s rich and unique history, the Japanese Americans of Seabrook, the largest ethnic group relocating to the area during World War II, established the Seabrook Educational and Cultural Center in 1994, the key component of a non-profit foundation which serves as both a museum and a memorial for the community’s rich history and contemporary life. The website includes a brief history of the region, as well as of the Seabrook Farms Company, the food-packaging company that preceded it.
Angel Island Immigration Station: http://www.aiisf.org
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation is a non-profit organization whose primary goals are to lead the effort to preserve, restore and interpret Angel Island Immigration Station, a National Historic Landmark, as the Pacific gateway for U.S. immigration; and to promote educational activities that further the understanding of Pacific Rim immigration in American history. |
