Japanese Americans

The Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection is an archive of open-access, full‑image Japanese American and other overseas Japanese newspapers. To date 71 titles, comprising 537,640 pages, have been made available in the online collection. Some content is currently restricted to on-campus use at Stanford University due to copyright agreement with the publishers.

Produced by the Japanese-Americans interned at assembly centers and relocation centers around the country during World War II, these newspapers include articles written in English and Japanese, typed, handwritten and drawn. They advertise community events, provide logistical information about the camps and relocation, report on news from the community, and include editorials.

Published from 1939 to 2001, first in Vancouver, then in Kaslo, B.C., later in Winnipeg, and finally in Toronto, the newspaper follows the path of Japanese-Canadians during their eviction from the West Coast and their detention in a series of facilities in B.C.’s interior and the Prairies. Meant to voice the concerns specifically of Canadian-born children of immigrants, the paper eventually encompassed a broader mandate, for example by adding a Japanese-language section in 1942. Its pages are filled with news regarding the relocation, settlement, and economic conditions of the uprooted Japanese community, as well as its legal and political position, labour opportunities, and continued expressions of Japanese culture. The years of this paper available here—from its beginning to 1985— record a community both trapped by world events and making its own creative response to the forces engulfing it.

A Japanese American newspaper published in Salt Lake City, Utah, from 1914 to 1991. Founded by Issei Uneo Terasawa (1881–1939). as a Japanese language daily with a Buddhist orientation. One of just three Japanese American newspapers in the continental United States that published through the World War II years, since it was located outside the West Coast restricted area.

The Japanese-Canadian newspaper Tairiku Nippō (Continental Daily News) was published in Vancouver between 1907 and 1941. The paper, predominantly written in Japanese, was an important source of information for Japanese immigrants to British Columbia. The Nippō sheds light on the Japanese-Canadian community previous to the internment of Japanese Canadians during World War II.