Japanese Americans - Evacuation and Relocation, 1942-1945

Research Strategies

Japanese American Internment materials in the Las Positas College Library are listed in the above links to help you in your research. A short list of books on Discrimination Against Other Ethnic Groups in America during World War II can be found at the end of the section on Books.

Reference Sources

Use reference sources for background information, broad overviews and summaries. The reference collection includes general and subject dictionaries and encyclopedias, biographies, directories, almanacs, atlases, etc. Many also contain bibliographies for further research. Reference books cannot be checked out from the library but may be photocopied.

You may want to choose a topic on Japanese American internment, such as:

Art and Photography in the camps
Assimilation after the War
Camps: (Amache, Gila River, Heart Mountain, Jerome, Manzanar, Minidoka, Poston, Rohwer, Topaz and Tule Lake)
Civil rights
Education
Executive Order 9066
Living conditions (food, housing, camp occupations)
Reparations
Resistance (challenging the constitutionality)
Social life
Sports
War Relocation Authority
Young men in the military (100th/442nd)

If you choose a topic that is too narrow, you may have difficulty finding enough resources for your project.

Books & Audiovisual Materials

Use the library catalog to find materials in the library. This will show you all the books and audiovisual materials LPC Library owns. You can search for a book, a DVD, or video by the author, title, or subject. A subject search allows you to find books about a topic or a person. You may also ADD LIMITS to your search, such as "audiovisual" to find only DVDs and videorecordings, or other audiovisual formats.

Examples of subject headings:

Japanese Americans - Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945

World War, 1939-1945 - Japanese Americans

Japanese Americans - Biography

Manzanar War Relocation Center

Periodicals and Electronic Print Resources

To find articles published in magazines, journals, and newspapers, use one of the electronic print resources which index and provide periodical articles. Periodicals provide in-depth analyses of events and trends, research studies on particular subjects, and professional literature. You can access several pertinent online databases in the LPC Library or from home at the LPC Library Homepage.

Examples of LPC Electronic Print Resources:

History Reference Center. EBSCO. is a full-text database designed community colleges and undergraduate research. It features cover-to-cover full text for more than 650 historical encyclopedias and other non-fiction books and also includes full text for more than 50 leading history periodicals. Suggestion: Do a keyword search for "picture brides"

Academic Search Premier. EBSCO is LPC's largest academic multi-disciplinary database, which provides full text for more than 4,600 scholarly publications, including full text for more than 3,500 peer-reviewed journals. Coverage spans virtually every area of academic study and offers information dating as far back as 1975. Suggestion: Do a keyword search for "Japanese Americans and evacuation and relocation"

America's Newspapers. NewsBank - Contains the full-text of articles published in nationa, regional, and California newspapers, including: The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury, The Valley Times, and many other United States newspapers. Suggestion: Do a keyword search for "Japanese Americans" AND redress. (You will find good articles in these Californian newspapers because many Japanese Americans lived in California during World War II and were affected by relocation.)

Ethnic NewsWatch - Contains articles with a broad diversity of perspectives and viewpoints from newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic, minority, and native press. All the articles indexed are available in full-text. Suggestion: Do a keyword search for "Japanese Americans AND internment", or "Manzanar AND art", or "Heart Mountain AND Japanese Americans", or any other search to find your subject.

Internet Resources

You may want to explore some Internet resources to supplement or enhance your research. Always be cautious of information you find on the Web since the quality of sources varies tremendously on the Internet. It is always a good idea to check the information against another source. As with all information resources, whether in print or on the Internet, you evaluate its quality based on the following criteria:

Accuracy:       Is it free from mistakes and errors?

Authority:       What are the qualifications of the author?

Objectivity:    Is there any strong bias?

Currency:       Is the information up-to-date?

Coverage:      To what extent is the topic explored?

Citation of Sources

Keep printouts of your sources, or write out all pertinent information on author, title, publisher, date, or Internet address to identify where you got the information. Follow the format recommended by your instructor or ask a librarian to show you a "style manual." You also may use LPC Citation Style Guides for online help, as well as the online resource, NoodbleBib, a bibliography composer.

You will find an annotated listing of Las Positas College Library books, reference materials, DVDs, and videorecordings in the associated web pages for Japanese American Evacuation and Relocation information. All listings in these pages are cited in M.L.A. style.

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