Prompts List

Some storytellers may wish to look over the list of questions so they can anticipate what is coming down the line, others may wish to move at a faster pace than the program is set up to cater or come back to a question from a past week. Still others may not wish to participate in the formal program, but do want help building their own self-led writing habit. This is the list of prompts our storytellers receive over the course of our program:

1. What foods did you enjoy as a child? Who made them? Do you make any of these foods today and if so how did you learn to make them? What do these foods mean to you now? Have you passed the recipes onto children, other relatives, or friends?

2. Tell us about your mom or another caregiver. Think about her personality, her work, her relationships with you, your father, your other siblings, her goals for you, major events in her life, her place of birth, her work/career.

3. What was your occupation? What kind of training did you undergo to succeed in that role? Is that what you had wanted to do when you were a child? How did you come to that path? What are you most proud of in your work?

4. Is there a story behind your name? What does your name mean to you? Did anyone ever make fun of it? How did you respond? Have you ever had any nicknames? How did you get your nickname? Do you go by your given name or a nickname today?

5. Tell us about your dad or a caregiver. Think about his personality, his work, his relationships with you, your mother, your other siblings, his goals for you, major events in his life, his place of birth, his work/career.

6. How did you meet your spouse or partner? Did you talk to them first or did they approach you? What did you do on your first date?

7. Tell us about your siblings. Think about personalities, relationships with you, with your parents, major shared events in your lives, their ages relative to you, and their places of birth. How has your relationship changed over time?

8. Tell us about a time you were part of a team. This can be sports but it can also be a work group or a musical group or some other type of hobby you worked on with a group. What were you working toward? Who were your teammates? What challenges did you encounter? What did you achieve?

9. Who were your best friends growing up? How did you meet? What did you do together? Did you stay in touch? If so, how?  What does that friendship mean to you now?

10. How did your family form community pre-war? Did you primarily hang out with other Japanese Americans, people of other ethnicities, or a mix of both? Who did your parents lean on? What did you do together? Where did you hang out?

11. How did you celebrate holidays growing up? How did you and your family change/adapt these holiday traditions in camp? How do you commemorate these as an adult? What traditions have you passed on? What new traditions have you and your family created? What do these mean to you today?

12. Tell us about your childhood home. Where was it? What neighborhood was it in? What did it look like? What alterations did your parents make? Where did you go to be alone or find comfort? What was the room you slept in like? Who did you share it with, if anyone? How did you decorate it?

13. Tell us about a gift you received that was especially meaningful to you. What was it and what was the significance of the gift to you? What happened to that gift?

14. Tell us about a teacher or coach who impacted you. What recollections do you have of them? What lessons did you take away from them?

15. Tell us about your pastimes and hobbies. What pastimes/hobbies did you pick up as a kid? Were there any you were introduced to in camp? Who taught you? What hobbies have you continued or picked up as an adult?

16. Describe your wedding day. How did you decide to get married? What did you wear? What did your spouse-to-be wear? Who was with you? Where were you? Who officiated? What did you do to celebrate?

17. Did you or your family keep in touch with any friends back home while you were in camp? Who? Did they visit you at any point in the assembly centers or the concentration camps? What did you talk about in your correspondence? What updates did they have about back home? What did the communications mean to you?

18. What were your chores growing up? Which ones did you enjoy/dislike? What were your siblings' chores? Did you trade with them?

19. Many former incarcerees have strong memories about the foods they encountered in camp, from spaghetti, to apple butter, to spam, to mutton. What do you remember about the food in camp? What was your routine around mealtimes in camp? Who did you eat with? How was that different from your previous life?

20. What groups or clubs did you join in camp? What about your parents and siblings? What other ways did you find to form community?

21. Is there a song, movie, novel, or work of art or actor/musician/writer that was significant to you growing up? How did you first encounter the piece or the creator? What did it/they mean to you?

22. If you are a parent, tell us about raising your children. What challenges did you face as a parent? What were the highlights of your parenting experience?

23. What goals did your parents or caregivers have for you and your siblings? How did you know what these goals were? How did these goals impact your relationship?

24. How did your parents meet? How did they work together? What did you learn about partnership from them?

25. What do you remember about starting school? Tell us about your teacher, classmates, friends. What did you enjoy? What challenges did you face? What were you proud of? What kind of student were you? What subjects did you enjoy/find challenging?

26. What assembly centers and concentration camps did you spend time in? What order did you go to them in and what were the approximate dates/lengths of time? If you transferred to another camp, do you know why? How was the second camp different from the first?

27. Was your family religious? Where did you practice your faith? What was your faith community like? What does your faith mean to you? How did you practice that faith in camp? How did it change? How has it changed since?

28. What kinds of work did your parents do? How did they get started with it? Did you help them with their work and/or business(es) and if so, what tasks did they assign to you and your siblings?

29. Tell us about a time you stood up for someone who was being picked on. What did you do and why? What was the response? What did you take away from that experience?

30. What are you most proud of in your life? What challenges did you face and how did you respond? What are the highlights?

31. Some former incarcerees have described having "voids" or "gaps" in their memory around camp. Have you had that feeling? Try to describe what it feels like. How does it differ from the feeling of forgetting other memories?

32. Incarcerees at Poston and Gila River will describe the brutal heat in Arizona summers, while at Heart Mountain and Minidoka, incarcerees recall the frigid cold of Wyoming and Idaho winters. Some have fond recollections of natural landmarks they could see in camp. How did the weather and landscape impact your experience in camp?

33. Did you go to Japanese school pre-war? What was the routine like? How often did you go? Who was the teacher? Who were your friends there? Who else attended with you? How, if at all, did your Japanese language use change in camp or after?

34. Did you have any pets growing up? What kind and how did you get them? What were their names? How did they get their names? What did they look like? What was your relationship with your pet like? What happened to your pets when your family left for camp?

35. Where did you grow up? Did you move around during your childhood or did you stay in one area? Which one(s) do you consider your childhood “home” and why?

36. Tell us about your family back in Japan. Why did your relatives decide to leave Japan? What did they have when they came to this country? How did they make ends meet after they got here? What lore/family stories did they pass on to you?

37. Did you ever go on any excursions from camp? What were they? Where did you go? Who did you go with? Did you meet anyone on these trips? How did people react to you? Did you interact with anyone outside of your group? What do you think of those excursions/interactions now? (Think about school sporting events, scouting trips, shopping in the local community, short-term leave, etc.)

38. What was your first job? What did you do? Who did you work with? What were your responsibilities? How much were you paid?

39. If you were a young child in camp, do you have any memories of it? What are they? How did you interpret them then? How do you interpret them now? (If you didn’t have any memories as a young child in camp, what does camp mean to you?) How do you feel like it shaped your life after camp?

40. Did you serve in the armed forces? Did you volunteer or were you drafted? What war did you serve in? Where did you serve? Where did you train? Who did you serve with? What are you most proud of in your service? What was the hardest thing you had to do? (If you didn’t serve, did someone close to you serve?)

41. Did you notice the impact being in camp had on your parents, caregivers, or older relatives at the time? What were they? How did your understanding of its impact change later? How do you think observing that stress shaped you if at all?

42. Looking back on the incarceration experience, what lessons would you like people to think about?

43. Tell us about your first impressions of the WRA concentration camps. Where did you arrive? Who greeted you? What were the first things you had to do when you got there?

44. What was school like in camp? How was the classroom set up? What teachers did you like/dislike and why? Were there materials you went without?

45. Have you returned to the site(s) where you were incarcerated? What were your reactions to seeing the space again? Was it as part of a pilgrimage or reunion, or on your own (or with family)? Did anything about the site surprise you when you returned? (If you haven’t returned to the site, have you participated in any off-site reunions?)

46. If your first language was Japanese (or Spanish, in the case of the Peruvian/Panamanian incarcerees), what do you remember about learning English? Did you speak it at home or did you learn it at school? How did you pick it up? What challenges did you face as you started school?

47. Many former incarcerees describe life in camp as fairly tedious. Some people would break up the tedium by ordering stuff from the Sears catalog, or reading magazines. Was there anything that you would order from out of camp? Who did you order it from? How did you get it? What did it mean to you to have access to that in camp? What publications did you read? Did you order them in or were they produced in camp? What did you think of the camp newspaper?

48. Did you work in camp? If so, what did you do? Who did you work with? What were your responsibilities? How much were you paid? 

49. Did you participate in the redress movement? If so, how? How did you feel about receiving the U.S. apology and redress payment? Was one of those more meaningful to you and, if so, why?

50. When did you leave camp? Who were you with? Where did you go? Did someone go ahead to set things up? Where did you live initially after you got there?

51. What was your family’s experience of the Great Depression? Did your parents talk to you about what was going on at all? Did you have to make any changes to make ends meet during that time? How, if at all, did you see the impacts of those changes in the decades to follow?

52. Did the camp(s) you were in have a nickname(s)? What about your block in camp? What was the story behind these nicknames?

53. Did you or any of your siblings/friends leave camp for college or seasonal labor? Where did you/they go? What did you/they do? What was that experience like? Who was the first person in your family to leave camp permanently? Where did they go? What did they do? Did you rejoin them or did you go elsewhere?

54. What was your daily routine in camp? What about your family? Think about meal times, school, chores, and work, but also hobbies, pastimes, and free time.

55. Did you get pulled out of school to help with the harvest or any other agricultural work in camp? What kind of work did you do? Who were you with? Did you get paid and ,if so, how much? How did you and your family feel about being pulled out of school to help with this?

56. If you were incarcerated at Gila River, Poston, or Leupp, at what point did you realize you were incarcerated on an American Indian reservation? Did you ever interact with American Indians and if so how? What happened? Why do you think you were incarcerated on a reservation? How do you think the incarceration impacted these Native nations if at all? Do you think your experience differed because of this?

57. How do you think the experiences of incarcerees differed by age/generation? How did you witness these differences among your family members?

58. What were you doing when you found out about Pearl Harbor? Do you remember who told you or how you found out? What was your first reaction?

59. Children of immigrants often help their parents navigate administrative procedures. Did you help your parents navigate government processes growing up? Did that change after Pearl Harbor? Think about the different stages: FBI arrests, registration, curfew, “voluntary” removal, travel restrictions, and forced removal. What were you responsible for? What did your siblings or other relatives responsibility for? How did you learn where you were going and where to meet?

60. Were you aware of any activist movements in the camps? Did you attend any meetings? What were their messages? What were your reactions? What did your parents think of them?

61. What do you admire about how your parents raised you? If you're a parent, what did you try to emulate or decide to do differently? Why do you think they did things the way they did? How do you think your experiences during the war impacted their parenting? How do you think it impacted yours?

62. How did you learn you were leaving camp? What time of year was it? Where were you? Who told you? What preparations did you and your family have to make? What did you choose to bring home with you? What did you leave behind? How did you feel? Were you excited, anxious, fearful? What about?

63. Teens of every generation adopt new fads. What popular trends did you follow when you were a teenager? Think about in music, fashion, film. How did you learn about these trends? How did you stay up-to-date on these trends? How did you stay current on these trends in camp? What trends originated in camp? What did your parents think of these trends? How did they respond?

64. How did your life change after Pearl Harbor? Did you notice any changes in your relationships with friends, classmates, neighbors?

65. Tell us about the journey to the assembly center. How did you get there? What were your first impressions of the place? Had you been there before? If so, how had it changed? What remained? Where were your barracks? What was it like? What did you do to get set up there?

66. Tell us about your family’s preparations to leave home. What, if anything, did your parents put anything into storage? Who did they leave it with? Was there anything they had to sell? Who did they sell it to? How much did they get?

67. Tell us about the journey to the WRA concentration camps. How did you get there? Who were you with? How long did the journey take? What did you eat? Where did you use the restroom? What kinds of surveillance/security did you notice?

68. As rumors went around about arrests of Japanese American community leaders, some burned, buried, or hid belongings they worried might be used as “proof” of their connection to Japan. Others turned in contraband to the authorities. Did your family hide or get rid of anything? Did they turn anything in? Do you know what? Were they able to retrieve it?

69. Many Issei would use ideas about “shikata ganai” or “gaman” to get through their experiences in the concentration camps. Did your parents use/reference those ideas? Why do you think they drew on those concepts at that time? How did you feel about the use of those ideas?

70. How did the curfew and restrictions on movement post-Pearl Harbor affect you and your family?

71. What, if anything, did your parents tell you about the fence and guard towers? Did they caution you about them? What were your impressions of these? How, if all, did they impact your day-to-day life? Did you interact with the MPs at any point?

72. Did you face racism in your community before the war? Who did it come from? What did they do? What did you feel when it happened? What did you take away from the experience?

73. Had you been to Japan before the war? What was the journey like? How long were you there for? Who went with you? Who did you meet/stay with? What were your impressions of the country? What did you enjoy about being there? What challenges did you face? How was it coming back to the U.S. after that visit? Did you have any family in Japan during the war? Were you able to stay in touch with them at all? (If you didn’t, did any of your family members go to Japan pre-war? How did that affect you?)

74. How do you think your experiences in camp impacted your education and career path?

75. What did you pack as you prepared to leave for the assembly centers? Was there anything surprising you made sure to pack? Anything you had to leave behind? Was there anything you had to buy? Anything you later wished you brought?

76. Many incarcerees have described the lack of privacy in the latrines, the thin barrack walls, the mess halls as being particularly jarring. How did the latrines, showers and wider lack of privacy impact you? How did you adapt to these conditions?

77. How do you think the experiences of incarcerees differed based on gender? If you have any specific recollections that demonstrate these differences, what are they?

78. How did you feel about the loyalty questionnaire? Did you or your family/guardians have to fill it out? Who? If you did, why did you answer the way you did? Do you know how your family/guardians filled it out? How did you learn about their answers? How did their answers impact you? What was your reaction? Did they ever talk to you about why they answered it that way?

79. What did you do for fun in camp? Did you attend dances or watch movies? Where did you go to hang out with friends?

80. Did you face any prejudice and/or violence when you left camp? Where were you at the time? What happened? What did you take away from the experience?

81. How do you think your experiences in camp impacted your relationships with your parents and/or your children? How about romantic partners and friends? What would you like your loved ones to understand about the impact your time in camp had on you?

82. Resistance takes many forms. It can look like a protest, a strike or civil disobedience. It can also look like a camera when cameras were not allowed, or an essay for class, or refusing to follow a rule you don’t understand. What forms of resistance did you observe in the assembly centers and concentration camps? Were there any ways your family expressed resistance to incarceration? What did resistance mean to you back then and what does it mean to you now?

83. Did you, a friend or a loved one have any health problems or disabilities in camp? Did you or someone you love use the hospital/health facilities in camp? What was your experience of them? Did camp life aggravate any pre-existing health conditions or create new ones? How did you/they manage health problems differently in camp? How did it impact your/their quality of life in camp?

84. If you stored belongings or rented out property, were you able to return to them/retrieve them after the war? What kind of condition were they in?

85. A lot of former incarcerees describe talking about camp as very challenging. How and why did you start talking about camp? With whom? How have you practiced or developed that skill over time? Is there anything that you’ve wished to share but haven’t been able to yet?

86. What lessons/skills did you take away from your camp experience and how have you drawn on those after camp, if at all? Have they remained useful or did you feel that they outlived their usefulness at a certain point?

87. Were you or your family/friends sent to Tule Lake? What did you understand about the reasons you/they were sent there? Were you separated from anyone important to you when that happened? How did you say goodbye? Did you keep in touch?

88. Did you witness or participate in any moments of unrest/friction in camp? What caused the unrest? What were your impressions of the events? What were the different groups and what did they believe? How did you feel about what you saw? How did you respond?

89. How did your family set up/decorate your barracks? How were the assembly center quarters different from the ones at the long-term concentration camps? How did you supplement the cots provided by the WRA? What sort of decorations did you or your family make/buy? If you bought them, where did you get them? What measures did you take to give yourselves more privacy?

90. Did you or a loved one have health difficulties or disabilities that emerged due to the environment in camp, the diet, or the limited healthcare? Others have described the long-term impacts of poor infant nutrition/maternal healthcare, valley fever and persistent coughs from dust storms, or health conditions worsened by lack of healthcare. How did you cope with these in camp? Did those continue to impact you or your loved ones afterward?

91. In the decades that followed the war, there were subsequent waves of anti-Asian sentiment (the murder of Vincent Chin, the COVID-19 epidemic). How were you impacted by other waves of anti-Asian sentiment, if at all? Did you respond to these sentiments in any way? If so, how? How did your response change over time?

92. Did you or your family/friends renounce their citizenship or request expatriation/repatriation? If so, why did you/they make that choice? Did you/they end up going to Japan or did they find a way to stay? Did your/their feelings about it change over time? If so, how?

93. How did you cope with the stress of forced removal, camp, or resettlement? Were there any habits you developed, things you’d tell yourself, places you’d go, people you’d speak to? Did your loved ones come up with any coping strategies? Do you feel these helped you or hurt you? Did they stick with you after you left camp, and if so, did they help/hurt you after?

94. Where were you when 9/11 happened? How did you hear about the attacks on the Twin Towers? What was your reaction?

95. Have you spoken to your children and grandchildren about your incarceration experience? If so, what have you shared? What else would you like them to know? If you could tell your younger self something to comfort him/her during tough times, what would it be?*

96. Some people found community in camp while others experienced ostracization. Did you encounter anyone who was shunned in camp? Why do you think they were shunned? How did they react?

97. Times of stress can bring out interpersonal conflict. Did you experience that? What was your perspective on the disagreement? How did you handle it? What did you take away from the experience?

98. Are/were you involved in any activism or other forms of civic engagement? What causes do you care about and how did you get involved? How did your own experience impact your advocacy?

99. What were your impressions of the civil rights or women's rights movements? How did you see them applying to you and Asian Americans? Did you participate in them? If so, how? Have you continued to participate in activist movements? If so, which ones?

100. How did you learn that you were going to be removed? Where were you? Who told you? What was your reaction? Were you surprised? What else went through your head?

101. Communities sometimes have points of disagreement or discord, especially stemming from moments of trauma. What do you see as the major disagreements in the Japanese American community? In your opinion, have they been resolved? How so? To what extent? In your opinion, how do we resolve these sorts of disagreements? Can we?

102. How did you pass along or avoid passing on your Japanese American heritage, culture, language, or traditions to your children? Why did you choose this approach at that time? How did your approach change over time, if at all? Would you change anything now?

103. Did you interact with any of the non-Nikkei WRA employees or other people during the forced removal/incarceration? If so, how? Did you interact with any Black, Indigenous, Latine/Chicane, or other Asian American staff/MPs/train porters at the assembly centers, WRA concentration camps, or in transit to/from them? Did those interactions differ from your interactions with white staff/visitors? How?

104. Are you mixed-race/ethnicity, from an ethnic minority (Ainu or Uninanchu), or a marginalized caste (Burakumin)? Did you feel that you were singled out or ostracized because of this in the Japanese American community? If so, how? (If you are not a member of these groups, did you observe differences in treatment of members of any of these groups? Did you encounter or interact with any of these individuals?)

105. Did you or anyone you know go through a pregnancy in camp? How did being in camp impact the experience of pregnancy/early parenthood, in your opinion? (Think about: standing in line for meals, morning sickness, prenatal/infant nutrition)

106. Kids experience important developmental phases at different ages that are important for later growth. Think about: breast feeding/formula for developing immunity in infancy, toilet training and language acquisition as a toddler, early social interactions/parental bonding for shaping future relationships as a young child, puberty in the teenage years. Did you go through any of these important developmental phases in camp? How did being in camp shape your experience of this phase? Do you see the fact that you were in camp at this point in your life as shaping future developmental stages?

107. How did your experiences in World War II impact/shape your understanding of citizenship? How, if at all, have you passed along those ideas to your children or grandchildren?

108. Particularly in the wake of the Cold War, the U.S. has valued the nuclear family (mom, dad, two-ish kids). Did your family or any of your friends’ families looked different from this? Think about households with 3+ generations (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.), single-parents, extra-marital relationships, common-law marriages, and/or LGBTQ relationships. How were these families treated pre-war and in camp? How did the government-imposed living quarters impact these relationships?

109. How did your camp experience shape your involvement in the Japanese American community post-war?

110. Have you stayed in touch with other incarcerees? Are they people you met in camp or afterward? How do you correspond? What do these relationships mean to you?

111. When did you learn you were leaving the assembly center? How much time did you have to prepare? Did you know where you were going? At what point did you learn where you were going? What was your first reaction to learning where you were being sent?

112. Some people anticipated the U.S. entering the war, though they didn’t know exactly when or how it would happen. Did your parents anticipate the possibility of war? Did you have conversations with them or overhear their conversations with others about the war? What did your parents think of the war with Japan? How did Pearl Harbor impact their view of the war?

113. How long did you expect to be gone for when you left for camp? At what point did it set in that you might be gone for several years or, if applicable, that you might not return to your pre-war home? How did the reality differ from your expectation?

114. Did someone close to you get arrested after Pearl Harbor? Were you there when they were taken? What happened? Did you know where they were taken? How did you learn where they were? How did that impact you and your relationship? When did you see them next? How had they changed?

115. Did you hear of or witness any instances of violent or non-violent crime in the camps? How did the administration handle these? Was the perpetrator identified? Did the community take a side and, if so, which? What did you think of how it was handled? Was the victim offered any amends and, if so, what? Was crime generally handled similarly/consistently or did you notice discrepancies?

116. Looking back, is there any advice or wisdom you wish you could give your younger self?