Asian Pacific American Studies

This database contains all the materials the library provides access to through Accessible Archives. Some of the materials in this database (African American Newspapers, Pennsylvania Gazette, etc.) are owned outright by the library and have their own listings elsewhere in the database listings, but this entry will give you access to the content we subscribe to on a temporary basis as well. Accessible Archives is made up of a number of digitized historical newspapers which cover a range of topics, but which generally focus on early American history.

America: History and Life indexes literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With indexing for 1,700 journals from as far back as 1910, this database is a strong bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history. This database also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. The predominantly English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and…

Ethnic NewsWatch (ENW) features newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing access to their perspectives. With titles dating from 1990, ENW presents a full-text collection of more than 300 publications offering both national and regional coverage. The collection contains publications from Asian-American, Jewish, African-American, Native-American, Arab-American, Eastern-European, and multi-ethnic communities. Titles include New York Amsterdam News, Asian Wee…

The rosters, which are part of the Records of the War Relocation Authority, consist of alphabetical lists of evacuees resident at the relocation centers during the period of their existence. The lists typically provide the following information about the individual evacuees: name, family number, sex, date of birth, marital status, citizenship status, alien registration number, method of original entry into center (from an assembly center, other institution, Hawaii, another relocation center, birth, or other), date of entry, pre-evacuation address, center address, type of final departure (indefinite leave, internment, repatriation, segregation, relocation, or death), date of departure, and final destination. Included for each center are summary tabulations on evacuees resident at the center and on total admissions and departures.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor and the war that followed were well covered by the national press; however, little was known of the actions this nation took in regard to the Japanese-American minority population living on the West Coast. In the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government was besieged with demands that action be taken against the Japanese in the form of removal from "sensitive areas" and incarceration in camps, preferably located in the interior of the U.S. These demands and subsequent actions were motivated by the fear that Japanese-Americans would become a fifth column for the Japanese military command and spy against the U.S. By April 1942, more than 100,000 Japanese persons - aliens and American citizens - were housed in what came to be known as relocation centers run by the War Relocation Authority. 24,838 images from the Library of Congress

In an atmosphere of hysteria following U.S. entry into the Second World War, and with the support of officials at all levels of the federal government, President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the internment of tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry and resident aliens from Japan. Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, dated February 19, 1942, gave the U.S. military broad powers to ban any citizen from a wide coastal area stretching from the state of Washington to California and extending inland into southern Arizona. The order also authorized transporting these citizens to assembly centers hastily set up and governed by the military in Arizona, California, Oregon, and Washington. The same executive order, as well as other war-time orders and restrictions, were also applied to smaller numbers of residents of the United States of Italian or German descent. Yet while these individuals (and others from those groups) suffered grievous violations of their civil liberties, the war-time measures applied to Japanese Americans were harsher and more sweeping. Entire communities were uprooted by an executive order that targeted U.S. citizens and resident aliens. Content: 6,734 images