Citizenship, Civil Rights & Japanese Internment
Tough Terms
• Alien
• Nativism
• Xenophobia
• Issei
• NiseiNisei soldier World War II era
Historical Background• Aliens or Immigrants
• Asian Immigration & American Nativism (1870s-1920s)
• Legacies of Anti-Asian Sentiment
Harper’s Weekly illustration from 1870s
was critical of anti-Chinese sentiment.
WWII & Japanese Internment • Nativism by the Bombs’ Early Light
• FDR & Executive Order 9066
• Camp Life
Illustration and Writing Project• Individual Creative Writing
• Small Group Discussion
• Large Group Discussion of Illustrations
Image 1
Wanto Grocery, owned by an Asian American, UC Berkeley graduate. (California, December 1941)
Image 2
Reading evacuation orders on a bulletin board in Los Angeles. These families will have as little as one week to report to the relocation center. (1942) Library of Congress.
Image 3
Dorothea Lange, “One Nation Indivisible.” Pledge of Allegiance at Rafael Weill Elementary School a few weeks prior to evacuation. (San Francisco, 1942)
Image 4
Japanese Americans register for internment at the Santa Anita reception center in Los Angeles. (1942) Library of Congress
Image 5
Evacuees waiting with their luggage at the old train station in Los Angeles, CA. The train will take them to Owens Valley. (April 1942) Library of Congress
Image 6
Japanese Americans waiting to board the train that will take them to the internment camp in Owens Valley. (April 1942)
Image 7
“All Packed Up and Ready to Go” Editorial Cartoon, San Francisco News (March 6, 1942)
Image 8
Family arriving in internment camp barracks, from the Tacoma New Tribune, University of Washington. (no date)
Image 9
An American Soldier on guard duty at an internment camp holds a Japanese American child. Tacoma News Tribune, University of Washington.
Image 10
Internment camp mess hall. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, University of Washington.
Image 11
Byron, Takashi Tsuzuki, Forced Removal, Act II, 1944. Japanese American National Museum Collection.
Image 12
G.S. Hante, a barber in Kent, Washington, displays his sentiments about internment. (March 1944)
The Rest of the Story• Confiscation and Property Loss
• Korematsu v. United States (1944)
• Apology & Reparations
George H. W. Bush’s apology to Japanese Americans held in the
internment camps. (1988)