Japanese Studies

Library of Congress's digital collection of Japanese American internment camp newspapers

"Discover Nikkei is a community website about Nikkei identity, culture, and history. The goal of this project is to provide an inviting space for the community to share, explore, and connect with each other through diverse Nikkei stories, experiences, and perspectives."

"A free on-line resource about the history of the Japanese American WWII exclusion and incarceration experience"

Includes interviews with Japanese Americans in the Chicago area.

List of resources

"Erik Matsunaga’s investigations into the history of Chicago’s Japanese American community"

"Takako Day, originally from Kobe, Japan, is an award-winning freelance writer and independent researcher...she has written from the perspective of a cultural minority for more than 30 years on such subjects as Japanese and Asian American issues in San Francisco, Native American issues in South Dakota (where she lived for seven years) and most recently (since 1999), the history of little known Japanese Americans in pre-war Chicago."

"Greg Robinson, a native New Yorker, is Professor of History at l'Université du Québec À Montréal, a French-language institution in Montreal, Canada."

Made available by Virtual Asian American Art Museum

"This collection contains oral history interviews from the Japanese American Service Committee Legacy Center's holdings. Many of the interviews cover topics related to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and the resettlement of Japanese Americans in the Chicago area afterward. Where available, transcriptions have been included and synced to the recordings to enable full-text searching."

"UPROOTED is an interactive multimedia experience about the multigenerational effects of Japanese American incarceration during World War II — from the West Coast to Chicago. The three families featured were selected from more than 100 oral histories of other resilient individuals for the depth and range of their collective experiences. You can view a selection of other interviews with Chicago-area Japanese Americans here." (comes with classroom resources)

"follows Koji Oshima, the proud owner of a small grocery store, as he prepares to abandon everything and report to an assembly center. His belongings, his business – everything must be sold or left behind, except what he can carry in one large duffel bag.---For high school and college classes, this experience can serve as a launching point for more in-depth discussion. Suggested questions and links to more resources and curricula are provided in the Teacher’s Resources section. Citations for the archival materials are also provided, and are available both by chapter or type of material."

The award-winning photojournalist Regina Boone takes on an assignment from her dying father: to find out what happened to his Japanese father, who disappeared when he was only three years old. Having long been curious about her grandfather, Regina courageously faces the pain and trauma that her family endured in the segregated South during and after World War II.

"The Buddhist Temple of Chicago (BTC) is one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Chicago"-- historically serving Japanese Americans.

"Experiential learning project as a part of Knox College Intercultural Summer Immersion Program explored the history of Japanese Americans in Chicago held in the summer of 2023."

PDFs of archival issues (1945-1984)

"The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is currently the world’s largest online archive of open-access, full image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers in Asia and South America."

"Visual Communications and Nikkei for Civil Rights & Redress (NCRR) presents SPEAK OUT FOR JUSTICE, the entire gavel-to-gavel tape coverage of the Los Angeles hearings, held August 4 - 6, 1981. We are releasing the full 26 hours of tapes, comprising over 150 testimonies from those impacted by Executive Order 9066, including special introductions by various community members."

Northeastern Illinois University Library Collection

"The Miyakawa Family Collection contains materials related to Japanese American incarceration during the Second World War as well as Japanese American social, cultural, and economic life in Chicago. Documents date from the early 1940s to 1954, with the bulk of items dating from 1945 to 1952. Materials include Hyde Park High School yearbook and ephemera, photographs of Japanese cultural institutions and activities in Hyde Park, and a New Testament pocket bible from the Grenada War Relocation Center, an American concentration camp in Amache, Colorado." (Available at Special Collections Research Center)

"Chicago’s South Side has long-standing but little-known relationships with Japan. In 1893 the Japanese Garden in Jackson Park was established for the World’s Columbian Exposition. In the same year the University of Chicago conferred its first-ever doctoral degree—upon a Japanese Divinity School student named Eiji Asada. Taking this momentous year as a point of departure, this exhibit highlights more than a century of connections between Japanese and Japanese Americans and the University and Hyde Park area."

Presentation by Eric Langowski (Japanese American Citizens League; Harris School of Public Policy student, CAPP ’20)

Panelists: Hannah Hogan, former Woodlawn/Hyde Park resident; Mariko Ventura, former Hyde Park resident; Ross Harano, Hyde Park High School alumnus

PDFs of archival issues (1945-1984)