“Lost” 1984 documentary, rediscovered and restored, about Japanese men and women who, at the turn of the century, immigrated to the West Coast of the United States. These pioneers tell their own stories of struggles and triumphs in a new land. “‘Issei’ brings to vivid life the world of early Japanese immigrants in rural California. Infused with spirit and humor, this captivating film is a treasure.” - Valerie Matsumoto, Professor, History,...

A Japanese American man recounts his grandfather's journey to America which he later also undertakes, and the feelings of being torn b

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a...

San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local fisherman is found suspiciously drowned, and a Japanese American named Kabuo Miyamoto is charged with his murder. In the course of the ensuing trial, it becomes clear that what is at stake is more than a man's guilt. For on San Pedro, memory grows as thickly as cedar trees and the fields of ripe strawberries--memories...

Winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award ▪ American Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award
"Haunting....A whodunit complete with courtroom maneuvering and surprising turns of evidence and at the same time a mystery, something altogether richer and deeper."—Los Angeles Times
San Piedro Island, north of Puget Sound, is a place so isolated that no one who lives there can afford to make enemies. But in 1954 a local...

"Days Of Waiting is a poignant documentary about an extraordinary woman, artist Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians to be interned with 110,000 Japanese Americans in 1942. When internment came, she refused to be separated from her Japanese American husband and lived with him for four years behind barbed wire in the desolate Heart Mountain camp in Wyoming. During her internment, the artist recorded the rigors and deprivations of camp life with...

Examines the history of Japanese in the United States, focusing on their treatment during World War II, including the mass relocation to internment camps and the distinguished service of Japanese Americans in the American military.

Like many innocent Japanese Americans released from WWII forced incarceration camps, the young Omori sisters did their best to erase the memories and scars of life under confinement. Fifty years later acclaimed filmmaker Emiko Omori asks her older sister and other detainees to reflect on the personal and political consequences of the camps. Visually stunning and emotionally compelling, Rabbit in the Moon uses eye witness accounts to examine issues...

Struggling to move on after her husband's death, thirty-five-year-old Anna receives an unexpected phone call from her estranged grandmother, Goldie, summoning her to New York. A demanding woman with a sharp tongue and a devotion to fashion and etiquette, Goldie has not softened in the five years since she and her granddaughter last spoke. Now she wants Anna to drive her to San Francisco to return a collection of exquisite Japanese art to a long-lost...

No-No Boy tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a fictional version of the real-life "no-no boys." Yamada answered "no" twice in a compulsory government questionnaire as to whether he would serve in the armed forces and swear loyalty to the United States. Unwilling to pledge himself to the country that interned him and his family, Ichiro earns two years in prison and the hostility of his family and community when he returns home to Seattle. As Ozeki writes,...