• Introduction
• For the Teacher

Reading

• Executive Order No. 9066
• Relocation
• Loyalty Questionnaire
• Camp Rules
• Constitutional Issues
• Recollections

Images

• Civilian Exclusion Order
• Propaganda
• All Packed Up
• Internment
• Month-to-Month
• Perspective

Activities

• California's Japanese
• A Profile

Internment GIS files for:

• ArcGIS
• MyWorld GIS

For the Teacher

• Objectives
• GIS Activities
• Additional Resources
• Contact

Unit

• Understand the history of Japanese immigration to the United States, the laws regarding Japanese Americans rights to citizenship and property, and the racial discrimination against the Japanese that preceded internment during World War II. • Describe the physical existence in the internment camps and the day-to-day life of internees. • Use GIS software to analyze demographic changes in the Japanese American population as a result of internment. • Analyze the demographic characteristics of the interned Japanese American population in relation to stereotypes held at the time. • Analyze primary and secondary documents and explain how historical perspectives on the internment experience have changed in the years since World War II.

Related National Standards

History

Social Studies

Geography

GIS Activities

GIS activities are part of the activities in this unit. These activities make use of ArcGIS Online, an internet GIS service that runs on most browsers. If you do not have an an ArcGIS account and would like one you can sign up for a free personal account here. The Japanese Internment files are also available to download for ArcGIS Desktop: Download Japanese Internment Project Data The data and images in the various map layers are from a variety of sources: Layer Source California County Level Data Shape files from Minnesota Population Center.  National Historical Geographic Information System: Pre-release Version 0.1. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota 2004. Census data from Historical Census Browser. Retrieved February, 2007 from the University of Virginia, Geospatial and Statistical Data Center Records About Japanese Americans Relocated During World War II Series from Record Group 210: Records of the War Relocation Authority. Retrieved February, 2007 from the National Archives and Records Administration. Locations of Major World War II Military Bases in California Warren A. Beck and Ynez D. Haase, Historical Atlas of California, Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974.

 

Additional Resources

• Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project is a digital archive of videotaped interviews, photographs, documents, and other materials relating to the Japanese American experience during World War II.

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001.

 

Alice Yang Murray, editor, What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean?, New York: Bedford/St. Matin's, 2000.

Contact

Your comments and suggestion about these materials are more than welcome.

If you have ideas for additional topics that would lend themselves to the approach taken here, please pass them along. I'd enjoy collaborating with you.

email:

Rick Thomas

Last modified in January, 2011 by Rick Thomas