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HeritageQuest Online This link opens in a new window
HeritageQuest Online is a comprehensive treasury of American genealogical sourcesrich in unique primary sources, local and family histories, and finding aids. The database provides genealogical and historical sources for more than 60 countries, with coverage dating back as early as the 1700s.

DPLA Japanese American Internment During World War II
Compounding a long history of discrimination against Japanese immigrants to the US, Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor cast suspicion on America’s Japanese citizens and residents. By early 1942, fear of Japanese American collusion in Japan’s war effort prompted the US government to suspend the rights of its Japanese American citizens and relocate them to concentration camps. This decision, delivered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in Executive Order 9066, aimed to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast “exclusion area” where they had access to established channels of communication with Japan.
DPLA The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among the Ghosts (1976) weaves together elements from traditional Chinese folktales and incidents from the author’s experiences or family stories in five interconnected chapters. These chapters follow the lives of several women while they lived in China and/or after immigration to the United States: Kingston, her mother Brave Orchid, and her aunts, Moon Orchid and No Name Woman. Kingston, a first-generation Chinese-American, was born in Stockton, California, in 1940. The book uses recurring consideration of voices, stories, and ghosts to develop its various themes, including the transmission of culture across generations and the importance of gender and memory to the immigrant experience. The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named one of the top nonfiction books of the 1970s by Time. This source set includes photographs and other items useful for exploring the book’s context, contents, and impact.
Library of Congress: Asian Pacific Americans: Going for Broke
Asian Pacific Americans have made lasting contributions to America’s wartime efforts. The collections include stories from World War II and the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq Wars, with special emphasis on the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the "Go for Broke" outfit of Japanese Americans who fought valiantly in Europe during World War II. Many of these men put their lives on the line for their country while their families were confined to internment camps back in the States.
South Asian American Digital Archive
SAADA creates a more inclusive society by giving voice to South Asian Americans through documenting, preserving, and sharing stories that represent their unique and diverse experiences.
University of Southern California: Korean American Digital Archive
The documentary record of the Korean experience in America remains dispersed and difficult to access. The Korean American Digital Archive brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.

Research Tips

When searching the databases for information, here are a few helpful tips:

Click on Full-Text to retrieve articles that can be read immediately
Click on Peer-reviewed or Refereed to view articles from scholarly journals
Enter in keywords rather than full sentences
Use quotation marks when searching a phrase (2+ words). For example, "women's history", "famous women", "rosa parks". Use lower case since it will search both lower and upper case words.

Academic Video Online: Asian American, Native Hawaiin and Pacific Islanders

"Breadfruit & Open Spaces"

Breadfruit & Open Spaces gives a rare look into the personal stories and open living spaces of the Chuukese and Yapese people who live, work, and attend school on Guam, the land where they now grow and prepare their traditional foods.

Reference: "Breadfruit & Open Spaces" retrieved from Alexander Street via ProQuest.

"A Question of Loyalty"

This series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, and cultural innovation. It is a timely look at the role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation. An American-born generation straddles their birth country and their familial homelands in Asia. Family loyalties are tested during WWII, when Japanese Americans are held in detention camps and brothers are on opposite sides of the battle.

Reference: "A Question of Loyalty" retrieved from Alexander Street via ProQuest.

"Patsy Mink: Changing the Rules"

The first Asian American woman ever to be elected to Congress, Patsy Mink dedicated her life to participating in the democratic process and improving the lives of others.

"Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation"

This hour-long documentary is a provocative look at a historical event of which few Americans are aware. In mid-January, 1893, armed troops from the U.S.S. Boston landed at Honolulu in support of a treasonous coup d'etat against the constitutional sovereign of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Queen Lili'uokalani. The event was described by U.S. President Grover Cleveland as "an act of war." Stylized re-enactments, archival photos and film, political cartoons, historic quotes, and presentations by Hawaiian scholars tell Hawaiian history through Hawaiian eyes. Act of War: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation was broadcast on Hawai'i Public Television in 1993 during the centennial year of the overthrow of Queen Lili'uokalani, a landmark year in the Hawaiian movement for sovereignty and independence. In that same year, the U.S. Congress passed a joint resolution admitting the illegal taking of Hawai'i and formally apologizing to the Hawaiian people.

"An American Mosque"

An American Mosque is a film about Islam in America, religious intolerance, and the interfaith response to an historic hate-crime. When the Islamic Center of Yuba City, California, was burned to the ground in 1994, it was the first arson to destroy a mosque in US history. At the time, this incident was largely ignored. Now, decades later, this symbolically important story is revisited. Late one night, arsonists broke into the newly-constructed mosque, doused prayer rugs with gasoline, then lit the building ablaze. The mosque was reduced to ashes and an investigation ensued.