Individual stories add a powerful depth to our understandings of WWII incarceration. This awareness motivated me and a team of supporters to start conducting oral history interviews nearly twenty years ago and continues to drive Densho's efforts to find new ways to get these stories out to the world.
Today, the Densho Archives include over 800 interviews and 1,600 hours of video. While this is an invaluable resource, we wanted to make it easier for people looking for simple ways to incorporate incarceration stories into a presentation or classroom activity. With this in mind, Densho's Production Manager,
Dana Hoshide, who has been working with our oral history archive for over a decade, drew upon her deep knowledge of our content to curate a selection of clips for a new
YouTube channel. The 150 clips she selected are organized by topic:
When I am asked to give public presentations, I customize each talk to fit the audience. One of the ways I do this is by turning to this curated collection of videoclips and selecting an interview that I think will help my audience relate to the history. For example, if I talk to a group of high school students, I like to show clips of Japanese Americans who were in high school when World War II started. Or if I talk with a veteran group, I focus on clips from the 442nd and MIS. I can always find something interesting and hope you'll find these curated video clips as useful as I have.
Click on a topic and look at the clips. If you like it, share this page with your friends. And please let me know what you think at
[email protected]. Happy summer!