The U.S. judicial system, by and large, failed to protect the rights of the Japanese American community during World War II. Although the Justice Department, led by Attorney General Francis Biddle, opposed the forced removal of U.S. citizens of Japanese ancestry, in the end President Roosevelt approved mass removal, leading …
Throughout Japanese American history, a number of individuals have mobilized in response to incidents of racism facing their community. Along with calling for the end of anti-Japanese discrimination, a smaller number of Japanese American activists, of whom Yuri Kochiyama is perhaps the most prominent, have willingly connected their own experiences …
The world of Japanese American visual artists is diverse. Most art historians focus on the notable individuals, such as Chiura Obata and Isamu Noguchi (among others), who produced paintings and sculpture. However, absent from this narrative is the work of various Japanese American commercial artists who influenced American popular art. …
On November 6, 1943, the California State Assembly’s Committee on the Japanese Problem convened in the small town of Santa Maria, California. Known throughout the state as an agricultural hub, Santa Maria and its twin town of Guadalupe had shared one of the state’s largest Japanese American agricultural communities until …
As I have discussed in previous articles in Discover Nikkei, the news of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II seeped beyond the borders of the U.S. and traveled around the world. In Japan and Axis-dominated Europe, news outlets picked up the story as proof of the …
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