Japanese

The mission of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education is to overcome prejudice, intolerance and bigotry-and the suffering they cause-through the educational use of its visual history testimonies. The Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive contains nearly 52,000 videotaped interviews with witnesses to the Holocaust that were conducted in 56 countries and in 32 languages over the period 1994-2005. The c. 2,600 interviews which were gathered in Los Angeles relate to the experiences of Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to the city during and after World War II.

The Edith R. Wyle Research Library of the Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM) was donated to the L.A. County Museum of Art Research Library in December 1997 during a period of consolidation for the Museum. (CAFAM reopened in April 1999 under the auspices of the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.) The Edith R. Wyle Library's holdings reflect the exhibiting and collecting interests of the Craft and Folk Art Museum. It's holdings pertaining to traditional folk art, international contemporary craft and design, professional museum practice, cultural diversity, and cultural context are significant. It's particular strengths are in the areas of Mexican and Japanese folk art, masks and masking worldwide, and the history of folk art and craft collecting. Altogether the Wyle Research Library's holdings comprise approximately 5,500 books as well as exhibition catalogs, journals, newspaper clipping and pamphlet files, posters, biographical files on contemporary craft artists (including slides), and biographical files on self-taught artists. In 1994 the Bead Society of Los Angeles donated its library collection of about 200 books, catalogs, and ephemera on beads.

The Local History Collection for the Palos Verdes Library District focuses on the social and cultural history of the Palos Verdes Peninsula from 1920 to the present. This fairly extensive collection includes rare books, photographs, maps, blueprints, loose-leaf materials, scrapbooks, newspaper clip-pings, telephone books, and oral history interviews—all relating to the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Based in the Little Tokyo area of Downtown Los Angeles, VC was founded in 1970 by a group of pioneering independent filmmakers to record, collect, and preserve a visual record of Asian Pacific American cultural heritage. VC originally worked as a film collective, concentrating on honestly portraying accurate images of Asian Americans and meticulously capturing pivotal social movements. VC produced groundbreaking works about the Asian American experience, including: CHINATOWN 2-STEP, a documentary on the suburbanization of Chinese American community in Los Angeles and the role of the Chinatown Drum and Bugle Corps; MANONG, a film on the first generation Filipino American immigrants; and WATARIDORI, a documentary on early Japanese American immigrant pioneers. VC published three books, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian Pacific America, Little Tokyo: One Hundred Years in Pictures, and Moving the Image: Independent Asian Pacific American Media Arts. Productions were used for education and activism that addressed setting up ethnic studies programs on local campuses, city redevelopment issues, the redress campaign for Japanese Americans interned during World War II, and the declaration of martial law in the Philippines. VC’s own past in all media, narrative films, documentaries and educational projects are intertwined with the Asian Pacific American movements of the 1970s, and in itself represents a rich resource for researchers of the Asian Pacific American movements. The Archives’ purpose is to document the history of the organization by organizing, preserving, and creating access to a variety of media art and primary materials recording impactful political moments and depicting the Asian Pacific American heritage for staff use, as well as by scholars who are interested in Visual Communications’ role in the Asian American communities and history. The holdings include over 300,000 photographic images, 1,500 titles in the Media Resource Library, 100 films and videos produced by Visual Communications, and over 1,000 hours of oral histories of pan-Asian Pacific American content. As a valuable resource of Asian media art representations, The Archives is open to a wide variety of users, and we encourage the public, artists, filmmakers, students, faculty and others to pursue an intercultural understanding of the Asian American heritage. VC’s vision for the archives is to accurately reflect and represent the diversity of the American populace and to cement Asian Pacific American experiences in the historical record through the preservation, access, and dissemination of our materials, which provide historical context and insight of Asian Pacific American influence not only for Asian Pacific Americans, but also for all Americans. Please refer to our list of holdings for more information: http://fromthevcvault.wordpress.com/vc-archives-collections/

The Go For Broke National Education Center holds more than 1,150 life history interviews of Americans of Japanese ancestry who served in the United States Army in WWII. Many of the veterans interviewed were born and raised in Los Angeles and the surrounding area. Their videotaped interviews provide us with stories about the neighborhoods in which they lived and worked, the larger Japanese American Community in and around Los Angeles, both the Japanese and American cultures that shaped and molded their identity, values their parents taught them, a unique minority viewpoint of a pre-war and post-war Los Angeles, their experiences as soldiers in the U.S. Army in WWII and much more. Often the veterans contributed photographs and documents to complement their stories. The Go For Broke National Education Center would like to offer access to researchers, adding to the rich history of our city, our state and our country. Incorporated in 1989, Japanese American World War II veterans established the 100th/442nd/MIS WWII Memorial Foundation, now the Go For Broke National Education Center, to build the Go For Broke Monument. The Monument, the first of its kind on the mainland U.S., includes more than 16,000 names of Japanese American soldiers and officers who served overseas during World War II. It was unveiled in June 1999 and is located in downtown Los Angeles at Temple and Alameda streets. The Go For Broke National Education Center today focuses on providing a place and means by which all people can share their stories and recognize how the legacy of their lives contributes to the history of Los Angeles and the American ideals of freedom and equal opportunity for all. Go For Broke offers several programs to educate the public on this important time in history, including: A Tradition of Honor Teacher Training Program, Hanashi Oral History Program, Resource Center, Go For Broke Monument and other media projects. Go For Broke National Education Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.

The Collections within The Los Angeles Harbor Department Historical Archives document the development of The Los Angeles Harbor as well as the surrounding communities of San Pedro, Wilmington and Long Beach beginning in the late nineteenth century through today. The Archive maintains over 26,000 linear feet of materials including photographs, plans, drawings, books and assorted ephemera that have been generated during the course of official business and community outreach.

We are a unit of the National Archives and Records Administration. Our holdings consist of the historically significant materials created by Federal agencies in southern California, Arizona and the greater Las Vegas, Nevada area. Agencies represented include the U.S. District Courts, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service. Our records document the complicated relationship between the Federal government and the people of southern California, including the role of the Navy and the Immigration and Naturalization Service in the evacuation of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II; the struggle for civil rights such as the desegregation of California schools in the landmark case, Mendez v. Westminster. Our District Court records contain cases of sedition, prohibition violations, obscenity and the struggle for free speech. Our holdings of the Bureau of Indian Affairs not only record the culture and history of southern California's Mission Indians, but also the work of the Los Angeles Employment Assistance Office, which worked between 1947 and the 1970s to relocate Native Peoples from rural reservations to learn trades in the Los Angeles area. We have records that document the growth of Hollywood as an industry and the lives of the people who worked there including the naturalizations of many Golden Age actors such as Cary Grant, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and others. The records of the U.S. District Court also document the development of technology and intellectual property rights in the film industry. The settlement and growth of southern California is documented here. Our holdings document the management of public lands, including homesteading, ranching and mining. We have records created by the Federal government related to the growth of aerospace industry giants such as Lockheed, Douglas Aircraft and Hughes Aircraft. Included is information on the research and development of aircraft such as the H-4 flying boat (the Spruce Goose) and the Bell XS-1. Also represented are records related to labor relations during World War II. The records of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers document their work on flood control in the Los Angeles river system, including the iconic channelization of the LA River.

Pasadena, Sierra Madre, South Pasadena, Altadena, Long Beach, Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Los Angeles, San Pedro, Santa Monica

Located on the Getty Center campus in Brentwood, the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute focuses on the history of art, architecture, and archaeology from prehistory to the contemporary period. Presently, the collections are strongest in the history of western European art and culture in Europe and North America; however, in recent years, they have expanded to include other areas, such as Latin America, Eastern Europe, and selected regions of Asia. The library's foundation lies in its special collections of original documents and objects. Recent acquisitions and initiatives have documented developments during the postwar years in Southern California. The special collections include contemporary artists' photographers' by Los Angeles artists; archives and manuscripts of Southern California artists, writers, and curators such as Sam Francis, Robert Irwin, and Henry Hopkins; archives of art publications such as High Performance magazine; prints, drawings, and multiples, including a complete set of those produced by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions; rare photographs and photographers’ archives, such as Charles Brittin's; architectural drawings and comprehensive archives such as John Parkinson's drawings for Union Station, the Walt Disney Concert Hall documentation, the Pierre Koenig and John Lautner archives, and the Julius Shulman Photography Archive highlighting Los Angeles architecture. Documenting the advanced art that put Los Angeles and Southern California on the map of the international art world, Long Beach Museum of Art Video Archive, now part of the Research Library's collections, contains close to 5000 tapes and supporting files.

Mount St. Mary's College was founded by the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in 1925 as the first Catholic women's college west of the Mississippi. It comprises two historic sites, the Chalon Campus high above Brentwood (1930), and the Doheny Campus, which occupies the former estate of Edward and Estelle Doheny, including the Doheny Mansion at 8 Chester Place (1906). The Mount's renowned nursing program, established in 1948, offered the city's first four-year baccalaureate degree in nursing. The Mount is widely respected for its leadership and research in diversity in higher education.