The beginning of a Japanese immigrant's journey to a new life in the United States, a form partially printed in purple ink and completed in manuscript with an official orange stamp. This visa grants a Mr. Takahashi (高橋正業, the first name could be transliterated Shogyo, Seigyo, or Masaygyo) leave to.....

A one-off Japanese American directory published five years after the end of the Second World War. No other directories were issued by the Japanese-American Book Company. This directory covers California, Oregon, Washington, and fifteen other states, plus Canada and the Kibei (Japanese Americans who returned to Japan). Each state is.....

Three trade cards from white San Franciscans offering to provide tourist guides into Chinatown. One card, with a handwritten note on the back (verso) dated 1888, predates the 1897 ordinance requiring guides to be licensed; the other two cards likely dated from the first decade of the 20th century. 1) Walter.....

First Edition. An English-language Japanese etiquette and cookbook written by Nisei students just before the outbreak of the Second World War. This book collects perhaps 150 recipes for soups, stews, main dishes, sashimi (raw fish), and nori maki (sushi rolls). The recipes use English measurements (tablespoons, cups, etc.) with detailed, straightforward.....

A program for a Chinese-themed variety show put on in May 1947 by the Portland, Oregon, Chinese-American American Legion post named after Portland native Victor Ying Lee. The jamboree appears to have drawn support from throughout Portland's Chinese American community, both as participants in the "theatrical extravaganza" and as advertisers.....

The House Un-American Activities extends its fear-mongering, innuendo, and racism to the parole program of the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which cleared interned Japanese Americans for work outside of the camps. The subcommittee on the WRA had three members and voted 2–1 to release this report. In favor were Reps.....

First Edition. A notorious anti-Chinese book by a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, issued with a remarkable and visually compelling fold-out color map of "vice" in San Francisco's Chinatown. "For historians in search of a complete single work containing most of the indictments widely disseminated in the.....

First Edition. The first edition of a Japanese American memoir, only recently published in English translation as An Internment Odyssey. Furuya, a native of Japan, emigrated to Hawaii in 1907 where he opened a successful furniture store. He also organized the Japanese language programming on a Hawaiian radio station and.....

First Edition. Harada's acerbic, illustrated memoirs of a stay in New York City. He is not fond of the people, the crowds, or the culture. Women particularly infuriated him. "Harada's... memoirs treat women as the objects of a kind of sexual rage: 'Because their society has indiscriminately raised them up too.....

First Edition. "A work on the Japanese from Yamanashi Prefecture, especially in California. Presents a history of the Japanese from this Prefecture, including their contributions to Japanese language newspapers, financial institutions, the laundry business; five biographical sketches of leading pioneers; and an outline of the Yamanashi Prefectural Associations of Northern.....

First Edition. A book promoting the virtues of California for a Japanese audience. The text extolls the vast size of California, its roads, its favorable business climate, and the tremendous opportunities for agriculture. The illustrations, rather poorly printed half-tone photographs, some with color overprinting, appear to be collected from various.....

First Edition. A collection of the key legal works affecting the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, published by the leading Japanese American civil rights organization. The three documents reprinted here are the amicus curiae brief of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) in the Fred Korematsu case.....

The starting point for the history of Japanese American settlements in most towns and cities in California. Kashiwamura attempted to identify the first Japanese immigrants to a particular location and traces settlements over their first few decades. He includes biographies of prominent Japanese in each locale and describes their businesses.....