SOURCES

Oral History Interview: Kara Kondo
Interview with Kara Kondo (December 2002). Collected by the Densho Project.

Use this source to contest the argument made by the film. Ms. Kondo’s account directly challenges the characterization of the evacuation as an easy and relatively painless event for those evacuated. Students can also consider how the unadorned interview, with no music or accompanying visuals, helps retain the quiet, but powerful human emotion behind Ms. Kondo’s story.

Japanese Relocation Poster
J.L. DeWitt, Commanding officer, May 3, 1942, Western Defense Command and Fourth Army Wartime Civil Control Administration. Published at the Presidio of San Francisco, CA (a military base).

Use this document to complicate the government’s claims that the relocation was done as considerately as possible and that it was a relatively easy transition for the evacuees. Students can consider the source information before reading and will likely predict that it will reiterate the government perspective. Yet, information included in the poster (6 days of preparation and the limits on what could be brought) challenges the film’s characterization of the events.

Students can also consider how the different audience for each source (film-going Americans vs. Americans to be evacuated) and purpose (explanation vs. implementation of order) affected the content and format of the source.

JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
Challenge students to select one or two sources from JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives and discuss how these sources contribute to their understanding of the evacuees’ experience.

Timeline
Help students understand the sequence of events between Pearl Harbor and the 1998 official apology with this timeline (scroll down). See this additional timeline for events preceding Pearl Harbor.

Graphic Organizer
Use this to guide students’ analysis of this footage and accompanying sources, discern the government’s argument in “Japanese Relocation,” and build a more accurate understanding of these events.