What is Omoide IV?
Omoide IV: Childhood Memories is a book of personal short stories comprised of childhood recollections of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. The Omoide IV project supports social studies educators and classroom learning by providing primary source content including a presentation by the authors.
How does Omoide IV help teach Social Studies?
The Omoide Project provides educators with key historic documents followed by a classroom presentation by the Omoide IV authors.
Omoide IV contributes to educators’ and students’ primary source needs to accomplish Washington State Classroom Based Assessments for Social Studies including:
- Dig Deep, grades 5, 8 and high school
- Checks and Balances, grade 8
- Constitutional Issues, grades 8 and 10/11
How does Omoide IV work?
Preparation: Educators receive source document texts: Executive Order 9066, the Bill of Rights, General DeWitt’s Notice to Persons of Japanese Ancestry and the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to help prepare students according to the educator’s lesson plans.
Presentation: The Omoide Team then comes into the classroom to present the stories, photographic artifacts and objects, sharing their personal experience of the internment period. During the presentation, the Omoide Team encourages small discussion groups to help students process the discussion.
Post Presentation: Presentations are excellent source material for the CBA projects. The Omoide Team welcomes receiving essays from the students.
Teacher Evaluations: the only requirement that we make of you.
Educational Collateral: Each teacher receives a copy of the Omoide IV book and a reader's guide. The school library receives a copy of Omoide IV. Students receive a two-page hand out that includes three stories covering different aspects of the internment experience and writing topics.
What does it cost? Schedule an Omoide presentation for free!
There is no charge for these presentations, thanks to funding from the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) with a Washington Civil Liberties grant.
When is the Omoide IV Team available?
The Omoide IV Team is taking requests for classroom and teacher workshop presentations in 2007.
How long is the Omoide presentation?
Depending on classroom needs, the Omoide presentation can be tailored to fit a regular class period or an additional amount of time as needed.
Where does the Omoide Team present?
Schools in Eastern and Western Washington: Funded by the OSPI grant in 2006, Omoide’s funding was renewed for 2007 to expand statewide, beyond Puget Sound to provide classroom presentations and educator workshops.
Educator Workshops: Omoide IV: Childhood Memories Educator Workshops delve into the historic and political context of WWII and the internment in greater detail than the student presentations, to assist teachers in envisioning preparing the class for the presentation.
Public Presentations: The Omoide Team welcomes the opportunity to present to the public as well as to educational institutions.
What presentation experience does the Omoide Team have?
In 2006, the Omoide Project introduced 350 students, 60 teachers and 200 members of the general public to the authors’ personal accounts their families’ incarceration, opening dialog about constitutional rights, World War II, Japanese American culture, the experience of immigrants in the US, family values, multi-cultural issues and more.
Who is on the Omoide Team?
Dee Goto - Dee’s family was one of the 100 dairy farmers in Kent, supplying half of Seattle’s milk supply around 1920. They were run out of the business and started over in row crop farming in the 1930s, moving 500 miles east to Eastern Oregon/Idaho where Dee was born in 1939. So she was not sent to camp, being outside the 400 mile restricted zone. Japanese Americans on the outside of camp had their own issues.
Atsushi (Ats) Kiuchi - Incarcerated with his family from 1942-1945 at Puyallup and Minidoka.
Janet Baba - Incarcerated with his family from 1942-1945 at Portland Assembly Center, Oregon; Minidoka War Relocation Authority, Idaho and Tule Lake War Relocation Authority, California.
Contact:
Omoide@jcccw.org
206 568 7114
Omoide IV is a project of the Nikkei Heritage Association of Washington
