Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project

Annotation

"Densho" means "to pass on to the next generation." In this quest, this website offers an archive of more than 668 oral histories presented in countless hours of video interviews on Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Materials also include approximately 12,000 historical photographs, documents, and newspapers. Visitors to this website should keep in mind that Densho is continually engaged in expanding its resources and adding more interviews, photographs, and documents, so be sure to check back periodically to discover new content!

Access to archival materials requires free registration. Once registered, users may select materials according to 32 topics, including immigration, community, religion and churches, education, race and racism, identity values, resistance, economic losses, redress and reparations, and reflections on the past.

Materials available without registration include lesson plans and information on "Causes of the Incarceration," "Civil Rights and Japanese American Incarceration," "Sites of Shame: Japanese American Detention Facilities," and "In the Shadow of My Country: A Japanese American Artist Remembers." The website also offers 90 multimedia materials providing historical context, a timeline, a glossary, and a list of related sources in print and online.

Hawaiian Statehood

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Photography, Unspoiled north shore of Hawaii's Oahu Island, between 1980 and 200
Question

When and why did Hawaii become a state?

Answer

Hawaii—a U.S. territory since 1898—became the 50th state in August, 1959, following a referendum in Hawaii in which more than 93% of the voters approved the proposition that the territory should be admitted as a state.

There were many Hawaiian petitions for statehood during the first half of the 20th century.

The voters wished to participate directly in electing their own governor and to have a full voice in national debates and elections that affected their lives. The voters also felt that statehood was warranted because they had demonstrated their loyalty—no matter what their ethnic background—to the U.S. to the fullest extent during World War II.

In retrospect, perhaps, the genuinely interesting question about Hawaii’s becoming a state is why it took so long—60 years from the time that it became a U.S. possession. There were many Hawaiian petitions for statehood during the first half of the 20th century. These were denied or ignored. Some in the U.S. had been convinced, even at the time of Hawaii’s annexation, that Hawaii had no natural connection to the rest of the states. It was not contiguous territory, most obviously, but 2,000 miles from the coast.

In retrospect, perhaps, the genuinely interesting question about Hawaii’s becoming a state is why it took so long.

Hawaii’s annexation in 1898 had much to do with the power of American plantation owners on the islands and the protection of their financial interests—both in gaining exemption from import taxes for the sugar they shipped to the U.S. and in protecting their holdings from possible confiscation or nationalization under a revived Hawaiian monarchy. There was considerable sentiment in the U.S. that annexation would be an unjust, imperialistic, and therefore un-American, move (Hawaii had more than sugar; it was a potential harbor and coaling station for naval vessels and was historically pressured in the 18th and 19th centuries for concessions by countries including Great Britain, Japan, and Russia).

Nevertheless, at the time of annexation the monarchy itself had only been in existence for a century, and originally consolidated power brutally, with the help of European sailors and firepower. Even by the end of the 19th century, a significant portion of the Caucasian residents of Hawaii had been born and raised there and considered themselves natives. Complicating the question was a large population of immigrant Japanese, Chinese, and Portuguese, all of whom had been originally encouraged to come in order to supply agricultural labor to the islands.

At the time of the vote, 90% of the population of Hawaii consisted of U.S. citizens.

Part of the decades-long reluctance to change Hawaii’s status from territory to state derived, both in Hawaii and on the mainland, from uncertainty and fear about granting electoral power to one ethnic group or another. This was not just Caucasian vs. ethnically Polynesian. Some ethnically Polynesian Hawaiians opposed the change from territory to state because, while they had come to feel comfortably “American,” they feared that the Japanese population on Hawaii (perhaps as high as 30%) would, under a universal franchise authorized by statehood, organize and vote itself into power to the disadvantage of the Hawaiians of Polynesian descent.

At the time of the vote, 90% of the population of Hawaii consisted of U.S. citizens. Hawaii’s importance in World War II had secured its identity as fully American in the minds of both Hawaiians and mainlanders. In addition, persistent and effective lobbying of Congressional representatives during this initial period of the modern Civil Rights Movement convinced enough members of Congress that this was the right moment to accept Hawaiian statehood, no matter what its racial makeup was.

Hawaiians themselves had been awaiting this for years, so much so that the “49th State” Record Label had been selling popular Hawaiian music since shortly after the War. As it turned out, Alaska entered as a state at the very beginning of 1959, making it the 49th, and when Hawaii came in several months later, it became the 50th state of the Union.

For more information

An Act to Provide for the Admission of the State of Hawaii into the Union. Act of March 18, 1959, Pub L 86-3, §1, 73 Stat 4.

Daws, Gavin. Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1968.

National Archives and Records Administration. “Hawaii Statehood, August 21, 1959.” Accessed November 13, 2012.

War Relocation Authority Camps in Arizona, 1942-1946

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Photo, Transportation, 1942
Annotation

Note: Unpublished because annotation does not seem to match website. Larger parent website also already covered at http://teachinghistory.org/history-content/website-reviews/23319.

This exhibit by an art student begins with 11 color postcard-like recreations of original black-and-white photographs documenting life in the Poston (AZ) War Relocation Center, where more than 17,000 Japanese-Americans were interned between 1942 and 1945 by the U.S. military. An accompanying essay provides background information and a brochure describes the Poston Monument. In addition, viewers can access six pages from "an Internment Camp's High School Yearbook," and additional legal documents, memoirs, newspaper and journal articles, a timeline, and book excerpts through links to 26 related documents and 40 websites. An important site on the internment experience.

What Happened to the Royal Family of Hawaii After the U.S. Took Over?

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Queen Liliuokalani
Question

What happened to the royal family of Hawaii after the U.S. took over?

Answer

Hawaii's monarchy was limited by the 1887 Constitution of the Kingdom of Hawaii, which King David Kalakaua (1836–1891) signed under threat of force, and which was therefore often known as the Bayonet Constitution. It established a constitutional monarchy much like Britain's, but also transferred power through a redefinition of the electoral franchise to an elite class of American, European, and native Hawaiian landowners.

When Kalakaua died in 1891, his sister Lili'uokalani (1838–1917) succeeded him on the throne. Soon she made plans to restore the monarchy's veto power and other features of the pre-1887 Constitution. A group of American and European residents, in opposition to the Queen, organized themselves and solicited protection from U.S. Marines and sailors, which U.S. Government Minister John Stevens provided. Queen Lili'uokalani was deposed on January 14, 1893, and a provisional government was formed.

On February 1, Stevens proclaimed Hawaii a protectorate of the United States. On July 4, 1894, the Republic of Hawaii was founded and Sanford Dole became its President. A brief effort at the beginning of 1895 to restore the monarchy and Lili'uokalani to the throne was thwarted. Arrested and convicted for playing a part in the failed effort, Lili'uokalani was confined to house arrest in Iolani Palace, where she spent much of her time writing songs. She abdicated her throne eight months later, in return for the commutation of the sentence of her fellow conspirators. Later, she would write that her signature on the abdication agreement, which she signed "Lili'uokalani Domonis" (she had married Robert Domonis), invalidated it because, as a monarch, she had never acted under that name, but only "Lili'uokalani." Be that as it may, the government pensioned her off and she retired to her palatial home, where she died, at age 79.

Hawaii was a united kingdom under a single monarch only for eighty years, from 1810, when Kamehameha I (1738–1819) brought all the islands under his control, to the time when the monarchy became defunct under Lili'uokalani. During that time, the rules of succession evolved, to include not only the members of the families of Kamehameha and Kalakaua, but also adopted sons and daughters (Lili'uokalani had three) and members of a noble class recognized by Kamehameha as eligible to be rulers. Because the kingdom ended more than a century ago and because all these families have continued to proliferate, there are currently a large number of people who might be considered as heirs or pretenders to the Hawaiian throne, were it ever to be revived.

Bibliography

William Adam Russ, The Hawaiian Revolution (1893–94) (Selinsgrove, Pa.: Susquehanna University Press, 1992).

Ralph S. Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1874–1893 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1967).

Gavan Daws, Shoal of Time: A History of the Hawaiian Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1974).

Norris W. Potter et al, History of the Hawaiian Kingdom (Honolulu: Bess Press, 2003).

George S. Kanahele, Emma: Hawai'i's Remarkable Queen (Honolulu: The Queen Emma Foundation, 1999) Liliuokalani, Hawaii’s Story (Rutland, Vt.: Tuttle, 1964).

Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands

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Photo, Class on coconut growing. . . , Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands
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This website offers more than 50,000 slides and photographs that document the history of the American period in Micronesia from 1947 to 1988. The image collection can be browsed or the visitor can sample the types of images in the collection through 12 short animated image tours. The topics of the image tours give an idea of the variety of images available in the collection: parades, dancing, voting, agriculture, stone money, canoes, architecture, women, leaders, education and children, health and hospitals, and men. The only search capability on the site is a Google search of the photograph description files. Additional resources include a map of Oceania and a link to the Hawaii War Records Archive. This archive is a useful source of images for those researching, writing, or teaching the cultural history of the Pacific Islands.

Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library

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Image, Digital Archive Collections at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa Library
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These 29 collections document the history of Hawaii and Micronesia from 1834 to the 1990s. "Annexation of Hawai'i," for example, contains thousands of pages of documents concerning the U.S. plan to annex Hawaii, realized in 1898. Materials include the 1,437-page Blount Report of 1894–95, initiated by President Grover Cleveland on the history of relations between the U.S. and Hawaii and the planned annexation; Congressional debates on the Hawaii Organic Act, passed in 1900 to establish a territorial government; and Hawaiian anti-annexation petitions and protest documents from 1897–98.

"Hawaii War Records" presents 880 photographs documenting the impact of World War II on Hawaii and its people. The "Trust Territories of the Pacific Islands" photo archive provides 52,000 photographs on programs in education, health, and political and economic development in the 2,100 islands of Micronesia administered by the U.S. from 1947 to 1994. The website also includes a collection of 16 Hawaiian-language newspapers.

Japanese-American Internment

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Photo, Oakland Store, from the National Japanese American Historical Society
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In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 authorizing the removal of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of whom were U.S. Citizens, into internment camps. This site, created for a class project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, provides a gateway to brief essays and samplings of primary sources about the internment period from 1942-1945, a time line, oral histories, and photographs. There are links to 34 electronic essays and roughly 50 websites. Some of the more useful links are to the the National Archives and Records Administration, which documents the rights of American Citizens and actions of the Federal Government; the War Relocations Authority Camps in Arizona; the Museum of the City of San Franciso; the Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project; and Heart Mountain Digital Preservation Project. The site also contains personal reminiscences of life in the camp. Though many links on this site are useful for research on Asian-American history and the history of the World War II home front, this site should be used carefully. Some of the information presented as "fact" is highly controversial, some links present hearsay or speculation as fact, and several of the links are broken or obsolete.

Japanese American National Museum Collections

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Drawing, Playing Go K5-BA, 8-24-42, George Hoshida, Japanese American Nat. Muse.
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This site provides access to the digitized resources of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Collections include more than 300 letters sent to Clara Breed, a San Diego librarian, by her former patrons after their relocation to internment camps; panoramic photos from Buddhist Churches of America events; artwork by Hideo Date, Hisako Hibi, Estelle Ishigo, Henry Sugomoto, and Benji Okubo; the diary of Stanley Hayami, a high school student during the internment years, later killed in combat at age 19; sketches and watercolors from the diary of George Hoshida; photographs of Manzanar and Tule Lake by Jack Iwata, as well as other photographs of daily life in the internment camps; a major collection of issei immigrant artifacts and plantation clothing; and photographs for the Rafu Shimpo, one of the oldest Japanese American newspapers in the U.S.

This is an excellent source for anyone seeking primary sources related to Japanese American experience in the U.S., particularly with an emphasis on the years of internment.

Ansel Adams's Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at Manzanar

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Photo, Tsutomu Fuhunago, Ansel Adams
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During World War II, the U.S. Government forced more than 100,000 Japanese Americans to leave their homes and businesses, relocating them to internment camps from California to Arkansas. Well-known photographer Ansel Adams documented the lives of Japanese Americans at the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California—from portraits to daily life, including agriculture and leisure.

This site presents 242 original negatives and 209 photographic prints, often displayed together to show Adams's developing and cropping techniques. His 1944 book on Manzanar, Born Free and Equal is also reproduced. Adams donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 1965, writing, "The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice . . . had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment."

A More Perfect Union

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Photo, Tule Lake renunciant, November 23, 1945
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Based on a 1987 Smithsonian exhibition, this site allows visitors to click and drag through sections of text, music, personal accounts, and images that tell stories of the forced—and ultimately determined to be unconstitutional—internment during World War II of 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast. Also provides searching capabilities to retrieve images of more than 800 artifacts relating to the lives of those interned.

Sections in the narrative cover immigration, removal, internment, loyalty, service, and justice. Provides a 5,000-word audio file of interview excerpts; 6,400-word accompanying text from the 1994 traveling exhibition; annotated timeline; 72-title bibliography; 20 links to related sites; and two classroom activities. Also invites visitors to share their responses and to read those of others. Of value to students of Asian American history, the homefront during World War II, and constitutional issues.