New Online From U. of California Berkeley’s Bancroft Library: Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study Digital Archive

From UC Berkeley:

A digital archive recently launched by the Bancroft Library sheds new light on the mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and their resettlement immediately following the war.
The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study Digital Archive is based on interdisciplinary academic research conducted by trained observers reporting from “war relocation centers.” The collection includes nearly 100,000 original manuscript items — among them personal narratives never before made public, due to restrictions on their release designed to protect individual internees who shared their experiences.
Visitors to the website can find, for example, a report on a work stoppage by Japanese Americans who served as boilermen at the Minidoka War Relocation Center, in southern Idaho; commentary comparing the culture of the Minidoka center with that at Tule Lake (where those the U.S. government deemed “disloyal” were segregated); and digital reproductions of newsletters and leaflets produced by Japanese American internees.
According to The Spoilage: Japanese-American Evacuation and Resettlement During World War II (UC Press 1946, 1974) by Thomas and Richard Shigeaki Nishimoto, at one time as many as 12 Japanese Americans, 11 of them bilingual in Japanese and English, were employed as technical or research assistants in the camps. Three Caucasians — grad students in anthropology and sociology — also “resided for long periods in the camps we were studying.”
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Visitors to the website may explore the massive research collection using a variety of tools, including textual searches, GIS tagging, interactive maps, a timeline and links to related resources. The online archive is the result of a two-year digitization project funded by the National Park Service through its Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant Program.

Direct to New Digital Archive

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