Teaching Guide
Below is a select listing of teaching resources for learning about Japanese Canadian internment. It includes resources developed in-house by the Nikkei National Museum, collaborations with academic and community partners, and the references we find most helpful to supplement our own materials.
This list is a living document meant to highlight the richest introductory resources for K-12 students and teachers. We encourage you to explore other resources you may find on specific areas of interest, and on Japanese Canadian history and culture beyond internment.
NNM developed or co-developed this resource.
Museum Experiences
In person Taiken field trips are available in half-day and full-day options.
Journeys Kits are hands-on experiences for your classroom available for loan. Pick up from our front desk, or we will ship it to you across Canada thanks to a sponsorship from the NNMCC Auxiliary.
Journeys Education Kit online resources: Oral history clips, teaching guide, lesson plans, and more designed to accompany our Journeys Education Kits in classroom use.
In the Classroom - Exhibits
Journeys Digital Resource explore Japanese Canadian dispossession with downloadable primary source documents, photographs, interactive apps, sample lesson plans, and more. Suitable for elementary and secondary students.
Writing Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Protest Letters of the 1940s online exhibit with videos, archival photographs, and a searchable primary-source archive. Suitable for secondary and undergraduate students.
Videos with Activities
Taiken Video Resources - with worksheets: four Japanese Canadian elders share their experiences before, during, and after the Second World War. Three videos 15-20 minutes in length with accompanying lesson plans and worksheets, and one additional six-minute video. Suitable for elementary and secondary students.
Omoi: Cultural Experiences videos: video series of Japanese Canadian community members sharing their experiences with Japanese culture. Includes accompanying activity. Suitable for all ages.
Nikkei Stories: twenty short (3-5 minute) videos sharing site-specific stories of prewar Japanese Canadian neighbourhoods in Powell Street and Steveston. Includes educational resources.
Film based lessons: Minoru: A Memory of Exile (Grades 9-12)
Games
Taiken: History Mystery Card Game: Follow the lives of real Japanese Canadians through the internment years through this interactive and informative card game. Recommended age 10+
KimonoPlay online game (cultural resource): Learn about kimono customs by dressing your own kimono doll. Suitable for all ages: recommended 5+
Japanese Canadians in the Second World War
Broken Promises self-guided tour app: iOS | Android
Hastings Park 1942 online exhibit
Map of Japanese Canadian Historic Places in British Columbia
Nikkei Tapestry: Japanese Canadians in Southern Alberta
Asahi Baseball Heritage Minute
East of the Rockies: AR experience in Slocan Internment Camp
Nikkei National Museum Collection
Japanese Canadian Oral History Collections
The New Canadian Newspaper Archives
Japanese Canadian Legacy Project: Sedai Archive, Oral History Videos
Reference Books
Elementary
Righting Canada’s Wrongs: Japanese Canadian Internment in the Second World War by Pamela Hickman and Masako Fukawa: this overview of Japanese Canadian internment is full of photographs that bring the narrative to life.
Justice In Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement by Roy Miki and Cassandra Kobayashi: an account of Japanese Canadian internment and the fight for Redress as told by two leaders of the Redress movement.
Secondary - available free online
The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese Canadians during the Second World War by Ann Sunahara: this readable overview of Japanese Canadian internment from a legal perspective provided vital historical evidence for the Redress movement in the 1980s.
Challenging Racist “British Columbia”: 150 Years and Counting: an open-source publication that links an overview of Japanese Canadian internment with experiences of Indigenous and other racialized communities in British Columbia. Links historical racism with current issues in British Columbia.
Fiction
Books are listed in ascending order of reading level (simplest first).
Naomi’s Tree by Joy Kogawa: Picture book that touches on immigration from Japan to Canada and internment experiences.
Naomi’s Road by Joy Kogawa: Simple chapter book about experience of internment. Very little historical detail, a good enhancement to factual resources. Naomi, protagonist, is a very young child, about 7 years old in 1942; narrative begins with childhood in Vancouver and finishes after the end of the war with the family living on a sugar beet farm.
A Child in Prison Camp by Shizuye Takashima: Colourful illustrations and narrative poetry. Based on the author’s childhood experiences.
On Being Yukiko by Jeff Chiba Stearns and Lillian Michiko Blakey: Graphic novel of Japanese Canadian experiences – from picture-bride immigration to internment – from perspective of a fifth-generation Japanese Canadian middle school student named Emma Yukiko. Emma’s grandmother tells her the story of her grandmother and mother. Includes some conversation among Emma and her friends about race and identity in a contemporary context. Some of the text might be challenging for younger readers, but they can still follow the main story through illustrations.
Torn Apart (Dear Canada series) by Susan Aihoshi: First-person diary account of 12-13-year-old Mary Kobayashi and her family: May 1941 – January 1943. Their ordinary Canadian life in Vancouver with her friends transforms with the government’s increasing restrictions on Japanese Canadians. Lots of great detail about specific experiences of family separation, the experiences of waiting to leave Vancouver, and early weeks in internment camp.