HIST-300 Workshop: Japanese-American Internment (Bayliss): Free Web Sites with Primary Sources

The mission of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team Historical Society is to research and preserve the history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This includes the actions and events related to the internment of Japanese American citizens and residents as a result of Executive Order 9066. The 442nd Regimental Combat Team Historical Society is also dedicated to the history of the 100th Infantry Battalion (Separate) and the issues related to the treatment of the Japanese American community in Hawaii following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

The Densho Digital Archive holds a wealth of visual history interviews and other materials that broadly document the Japanese American experience. These unique primary sources cover a span of history from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s with a particular focus on the World War II mass incarceration.

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science.

A collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the US includes over 400,000 pages from more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials, over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections, and more than 7,800 photographs.

From UC-Berkeley, this site contains documents, maps, plans and other primary sources covering camps in California, Utah, Idaho and Arizona.

The mission of the Japanese American National Museum is to promote understanding and appreciation of America’s ethnic and cultural diversity by sharing the Japanese American experience.

The online collection of Clara Breed, or "Miss Breed" as she was known by her young library patrons, includes over 300 letters and cards received by Breed from Japanese American children and young adults during their World War II incarceration. Miss Breed was the children's librarian at San Diego Public Library from 1929 to 1945. The online collection includes digital facsimiles of the correspondence as well as full transcriptions of the letters.

From the USC Digital Archives, this collection of photographs from the Hearst Collection of the Los Angeles Examiner in the USC Regional History Collection, documents the relocation of Japanese Americans in California during World War II. These 222 photographs provide a glimpse into the lives of Japanese immigrants and native born Japanese Americans (a.k.a. Nisei) residing in California from 1921 to 1958, with primary emphasis on 1941-1946.

Documents, photographs and other primary sources from the National Archives.

The National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS), founded in 1980, incorporated in 1981 is a non-profit membership organization is dedicated to the collection, preservation, authentic interpretation, and sharing of historical information of the Japanese American experience for the diverse broader national and global community.

The Nisei Baseball Research Project (NBRP) is a non-profit organization founded by Kerry Yo Nakagawa to preserve the history of Japanese American Baseball.

This digitized collection documenting the history of Japanese Americans who were sent to incarceration camps during World War II brings together the Success through Perseverance collection from the Fresno County Public Library and the JACL-CCDC Japanese American Oral History collection, TOMO Foundation and Japanese Americans in World War II collections from the Special Collections Research Center at California State University, Fresno. The digitized collection contains oral histories, newsletters and photographs.

From Utah State University Libaries, this site contains primary sources from the Topaz Relocation Center in Delta, UT.

The photographs in this exhibit represent a sampling of the resources available in the Special Collections Department, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah. Tule Lake, in northern California, was one of the most infamous of the internment camps. Prisoners there held frequent demonstrations and strikes, demanding their rights under the U.S. Constitution. As a result, it was made a "segregation camp," and internees from other camps who had refused to take the loyalty oath or had caused disturbances were sent to Tule Lake.