Sacramento State One Book 2023-24: Farewell to Manzanar

This collection was established in 1994 with a gift of photographs, documents and artifacts from the teaching materials of Mary Tsukamoto, and additional gifts from the Florin Japanese American Citizens League, records of the Sacramento VFW Nisei Post 8985, and more than 240 individual community members. It is international in scope, with an emphasis on Sacramento and the Central Valley, and is widely recognized because of the depth and breadth of its holdings. It includes documents created by incarcerees, governmental bodies, the military, concentration camp administrators and employees, and community members who were supportive of and hostile to people of Japanese descent.

Bringing together once hidden and dispersed archival materials into a central online database provides easy access to primary source evidence and documentation that’s useful to students, scholars and the interested public, who can use it to interpret and create a more nuanced history of Japanese Americans in the U.S.

Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all.

Transcript available at Sacramento State University Library.

In 1943, Ansel Adams (1902-1984), America's most well-known photographer, documented the Manzanar War Relocation Center in California and the Japanese-Americans interned there during World War II. For the first time, digital scans of both Adams's original negatives and his photographic prints appear side by side allowing viewers to see Adams's darkroom technique, in particular, how he cropped his prints.

Includes primary source documents and a teaching activity.