The Denshō Digital Archive < http://www.densho.org/archive/default.asp>, part of Denshō, The Japanese American Legacy Project, currently features 535 video interviews, in addition to photographs, documents, and newspapers which together create a powerful historical record about Japanese incarceration. Although the main emphasis is on the experiences of Japanese Americans during World War II, the archive also covers the early twentieth century up through the 1980s. You may either register for free to access the archive, or login using the Guest account.
Once you enter, the Denshō Digital Archive may be browsed by topics, such as immigration and citizenship, race and racism, US government propaganda, assembly centers, incarceration camps, resistance, redress and reparations, and political activism and involvement. Many of these topical categories contain subtopics. The “Incarceration Camps” category, for example, is further divided by subtopics ranging from the journey to living conditions, and from work and jobs to the impact of incarceration. Selecting a topic will retrieve the list of associated primary materials, including video interview segments which are indicated by a video camera icon. Each record lists the format, title, collection, time, place, and facility, as relevant. The video interview records also give the date and location of the interview, the interviewer(s), and a link from the segment to the complete interview.
If you wish only to view the video interviews, select “Visual History Collections,” and then “Denshō Visual History Collection” for a full list of interviews by person. Links are also provided to specific visual history collections, such as the Japanese American National Museum Collection, Manzanar National Historic Site Collection, and the Topaz Museum Collection. Additional features include links to photograph and document collections, incarceration facilities, and camp newspaper collections, as well as the ability to conduct a simple keyword search across the collections.
The Penrose Library also has several print oral history collections about the Japanese-American internment experience. The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey and Voices from this Long Brown Land: Oral Recollections of Owens Valley Lives and Manzanar Pasts are two titles from the Palgrave Studies in Oral History series. The Japanese American World War II Evacuation Oral History Project is another available title. You can search for additional oral histories by using keywords, such as Japanese Americans, evacuation, relocation, internment, or the names of specific relocation centers, in combination with oral history or interviews.
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