ddr-densho-1024 — Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films

Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films

ddr-densho-1024

The Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films includes over 100 films and videos about the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II. With footage spanning over eighty years, from the 1940s to the present, this library includes a wide range of projects that represent diverse viewpoints on this important episode in U.S. history. The earliest films in this library were created while the incarceration was still ongoing. Jointly produced by the War Relocation Authority and the Office of War Information, these films depicted the incarceration as benignly as possible and highlighted opportunities outside of the West Coast exclusion area, both to encourage incarcerated Japanese Americans to “resettle” in areas outside the restricted area and to encourage other Americans to accept Japanese Americans as neighbors. After decades of silence following the war, documentary films in the 1970s and 1980s—produced in the context of the Redress Movement—told a different story of racism, hardship, and forced removal and incarceration, including many works told from the perspective of Japanese Americans themselves. In the aftermath of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, an era of public funding began in the 1990s, which brought a flood of both documentary and narrative films that look at many aspects of the incarceration story. Each of the films included in this collection is accompanied by an article in the Densho Resource Guide to Media on the Japanese American Removal and Incarceration (https://resourceguide.densho.org/). Each article includes a synopsis, background information, production credits, and suggestions for further viewing, as well as links to relevant articles in Densho’s online encyclopedia (https://encyclopedia.densho.org/). There are two primary purposes for this project: preservation and education. It is an unfortunate fact of film history that large numbers of important films are ultimately lost to time. While the earliest government-produced films about the incarceration are readily available, a large percentage of films from the Redress era are difficult to find thirty and forty years later. With the generation of filmmakers who produced these early works aging and even passing on, this is a crucial time to preserve these works for posterity. Internet Archive (https://archive.org/) and its robust infrastructure represent the best way to ensure the preservation and availability of these films. As current events bring renewed interest in the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, the demand for relevant educational materials increases. While recent years have seen large amounts of materials made available online—including archival documents, photographs, and online exhibitions from the National Archives, university libraries, and community organizations, such as Densho—there has not been any systematic effort to collect and preserve film and video in particular. As such, this collection represents an important archive for both historians and educators, whether to show films in classes or to explore the evolution of how the incarceration story has been told over time. Densho intends to continue adding films to this digital library, and we encourage the public, as well as filmmakers themselves, to suggest additional titles for inclusion. We hope that the Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films can both serve as a resource to help educators and researchers tell the story of the World War II incarceration, while also helping to preserve this important event’s rich filmic legacy. The Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films was created by Densho (https://densho.org/) in collaboration with Internet Archive (https://archive.org/), and was funded, in part, by a grant from the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program (https://www.nps.gov/jacs/). The views and conclusions contained in the films in this library are those of the filmmakers and producers and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government, Densho, or Internet Archive. See this collection in the Digital Library of the Japanese American Incarceration Films at the Internet Archive.

1920-2025

1940-2025

Densho

Courtesy of Japanese American Film Preservation Project, Densho

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

106 Objects

av I Told You So (ddr-densho-1024-1)

Poet Lawson Inada shows how growing up in Fresno, California influenced his writing. He visits Tule Lake, the largest of the American concentration camps, where Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, were imprisoned during World War II. See this item in the Densho Resource Guide at: I Told You So. See this item …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-1/

av Justice Now! Reparations Now! (ddr-densho-1024-2)

A united front of Japanese American organizations, with the support of Japanese American legislators and the Congressional Black Caucus, uses grass roots organizing to successfully win reparations for unjust incarceration during World War II. See this item in the Densho Resource Guide at: Justice Now! Reparations Now!. See this item in the Digital Library of …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-2/

av Fort Sill Protest (ddr-densho-1024-3)

A coalition of progressive organizations, including Tsuru For Solidarity, American Indian Movement, Black Lives Matter and Brown Berets protest the holding of immigrants and refugees at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and expose its history as a prison for people of color. See this item in the Digital Library of the Japanese American Incarceration Films at: https://archive.org/details/ddr-densho-1024-3.

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-3/

av Crystal City Pilgrimage (ddr-densho-1024-4)

The first pilgrimage commemorating the largest U.S. Department of Justice multinational family concentration camp during World War II. See this item in the Densho Resource Guide at: Crystal City Pilgrimage. See this item in the Digital Library of the Japanese American Incarceration Films at: https://archive.org/details/ddr-densho-1024-4.

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-4/

av Wyoming Chronicle: Aura Newlin Japanese Americans in Wyoming (ddr-densho-1024-5)

Aura Newlin, a Northwest College faculty member and board member of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation, talks about her family history as a fourth generation Japanese American and a fourth generation Wyomingite, then takes the viewer on a tour of the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center , telling the story of the forced removal and incarceration and …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-5/

av Searchlight Serenade (ddr-densho-1024-6)

A 2012 documentary film on Japanese American swing dance bands in the World War II concentration camps. Produced by Claire Reynolds for KEET, a Eureka, California, based public television station serving California's northern coast, the hour long documentary debuted on October 30, 2012. The film was funded by grants from the Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-6/

av Six Weddings and a Dress (ddr-densho-1024-7)

Short documentary film centering on Chiyomi Ogawa, a Nisei woman who had been incarcerated in Manzanar , and her wedding dress, which was subsequently used by five other women in the early postwar years. Born as Chiyomi Marumoto in 1924, Ogawa and her family lived in the in fishing community of |Terminal Island , where her …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-7/

av Speak Out For Justice (Speaking Out!) (ddr-densho-1024-8)

Short compilation of testimony from the Los Angeles hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians includes excerpts from twenty-eight people covering a range of topics including the arrest and internment of Issei , the travails of being incarcerated, the continuing impact on the incarceration, and calls for monetary reparations. A total of …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-8/

av Truth of the Matter (A Matter of Truth) (ddr-densho-1024-9)

The power of executive orders can be devastating as in the Executive Order 9066 issued during World War II that placed over 110,000 Japanese living in America into concentration camps. Similar to the Executive Order to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. issued early in Trump's first days in office. See this item in the Digital …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-9/

av Putting Them Where They Could Do No Harm (ddr-densho-1024-10)

Short film that makes the case for renaming Fletcher Bowron Square in downtown Los Angeles, named after the wartime mayor of Los Angeles who agitated for the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans. Eschewing narration, the film uses Bowron's wartime radio addresses (voiced by Maciek Kolodziejeczak) as evidence of his anti-Japanese and pro-exclusion stance, juxtaposed with …

https://ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-1024-10/

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Digital Library of Japanese American Incarceration Films

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106 Objects