Part of the Collection:
Asian Pacific American Heritage MonthDensho digital archives
Densho is a Japanese term meaning “to pass on to the next generation,” or to leave a legacy. Densho’s mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II, before their memories are extinguished. The Densho digital archive shares primary sources that document the Japanese American experience from immigration in the early 1900s through redress in the 1980s with a strong focus on the World War II mass incarceration. The archive contains thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters, visual histories, and over 1,700 hours of recorded, fully transcribed video interviews. For ease of navigation, interviews and images are indexed by topic, location and chronology, and can be searched using keywords. These firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, can be used to explore principles of democracy, and promote equal justice for all.