Japanese American Incarceration
Major Oral-History Collections
| Densho Digital Repository: Oral-History Interviews | Densho | n.d.
Nearly 1,000 recorded interviews preserve the memories of former incarcerees, their relatives, activists, and others connected to Japanese American incarceration.
| Densho Archives | Densho | n.d.
A searchable collection of oral histories, family photographs, documents, newspapers, and personal records contributed by Japanese American families and community organizations.
| Stories from Manzanar | National Park Service | February 23, 2026
Personal accounts describe forced removal, daily life behind barbed wire, relationships with nearby communities, and the difficulties families encountered after leaving camp.
| Oral Histories: American Concentration Camps | Masumi Hayashi Foundation | n.d.
Audio excerpts feature former incarcerees remembering removal, confinement, divided loyalties, resistance, and the lasting effects of incarceration on their families.
| World War II-era Japanese American Incarceration | UC Berkeley Oral History Center | March 7, 2024
Interviews document property loss, disrupted education, identity, forced relocation, incarceration, resettlement, and the emotional consequences of the experience.
| Japanese Internment Experience Collections | Mountain West Digital Library | May 4, 2018
A gateway to interviews and personal materials from former residents of Topaz, Heart Mountain, and other incarceration sites, including 33 Topaz oral-history records.
| Japanese American Incarceration: Oral History and Primary Sources | Library of Congress | n.d.
Introduces incarceration through Norman Ikari’s testimony and supporting photographs, documents, and government records.
| Robert Hiroshi Kono Collection | Library of Congress Veterans History Project | 2003
Robert Kono recalls being forcibly removed and confined as a young Japanese American before serving in the United States military.
Diaries, Letters, and Personal Artwork
Sixteen-year-old Stanley Hayami’s diary entries, letters, and sketches reveal his school life, ambitions, family relationships, and thoughts while imprisoned at Heart Mountain.
| A Life in Pieces: Videos | Japanese American National Museum | 2021
A series of videos brings Stanley Hayami’s words and artwork to life, presenting incarceration through the perspective of a Japanese American teenager.
| Stanley Hayami Diary Excerpts | Mission US | n.d.
Selected diary entries provide a direct window into the routines, anxieties, friendships, and aspirations of a teenager incarcerated at Heart Mountain.
| Featured Collections | Japanese American National Museum | n.d.
Includes Estelle Ishigo’s drawings of life at Pomona and Heart Mountain, George Hoshida’s wartime artwork, and other materials created by people directly affected by incarceration.
| Japanese American National Museum Collections | Japanese American National Museum | n.d.
Features diaries, letters, clothing, artwork, photographs, and other objects through which incarcerated people documented their own lives and communities.
| Japanese American National Museum Digital Collections | Calisphere | n.d.
Digitized collections include hundreds of letters written by Japanese American students, as well as photographs, drawings, diaries, and family papers.
| Japanese Relocation and Internment Resources | National Archives | n.d.
Directs researchers to digital collections containing personal diaries, letters, photographs, drawings, camp newsletters, and administrative records.
Community Voices and Camp Publications
| Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers, 1942–1946 | Library of Congress | 1942–1946
Newspapers written and edited inside the camps record births, deaths, sports, schools, employment, politics, social activities, and the everyday concerns of incarcerated communities.
Presents newsletters, pamphlets, publications, photographs, and other materials produced by or circulated among people living in the camps.
Provides access to camp letters, oral histories, independent publications, photographs, legal correspondence, family papers, and materials documenting resistance and resettlement.
Memory, Redress, and Later Generations
| Commemorating Redress in the Archives | Densho | August 10, 2020
Draws upon survivor testimony and community records to recount how former incarcerees broke decades of silence and organized for acknowledgment and reparations.
| How We Remember | Densho | February 25, 2019
Brett Ryoji Kodama traces his family’s incarceration history and considers how photographs, family memories, and inherited trauma shape later generations.
Introduces interviews with 23 descendants of people imprisoned at Manzanar and Topaz, exploring inherited trauma, identity, healing, creativity, and family silence.
| Survivor Voices and the Japanese American Redress Movement | Densho | August 10, 2020
Testimony from former incarcerees shows how personal memories became evidence in the grassroots campaign that led to the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.
A descendant’s account connects her family’s Heart Mountain incarceration with the prior dispossession of Indigenous peoples from lands used for confinement sites.
Individual and Family Stories
| Tom Ikeda: Why Densho Matters to Me | Densho | August 16, 2016
Densho’s founding executive director explains why he began recording the testimony of Japanese Americans who had lived through wartime incarceration.
| The Little Exile | Densho | May 16, 2017
Introduces the autobiographical story of a young girl whose family was confined first at the Stockton Assembly Center and later at Rohwer.
| The U.S. Put Norman Mineta in an Incarceration Camp—Then He Went to Congress | Time | May 20, 2019
Norman Mineta’s life story connects his childhood imprisonment at Heart Mountain with his later career in civil rights, Congress, and the presidential cabinet.
Survivors and descendants describe honoring relatives in the Ireichō, a memorial book containing more than 125,000 names of people subjected to wartime incarceration.
