A Guide to Primary Sources

	A primary source is a document that was created at the time of the event or subject you've chosen to study or by people who were observers of or participants in that event or topic.
	If, for example, your topic is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, primary sources might include:

	newspapers of the 1940s,
	records of court cases decided just after the end of World War II, or even
	autobiographies of Japanese Americans published many years later

They would not, however, include books written by historians about this topic, because books written by historians are called "secondary" sources. The same goes for historian's introductions to and editorial comments on collections of primary documents; these materials, too, are secondary sources because they're twice removed from the actual event or process you're going to be writing about.

Examples of Primary Sources:

Adams, Ansel. Born Free and Equal: Photographs of the Loyal Japanese-Americans at Manzanar Relocation Center, Inyo County, California. New York: U.S. Camera, 1944.

Photos by the famous photographer of the American West. In the rare books department of Special Collections.

Daniels, Roger, ed. American Concentration Camps. New York: Garland, 1989.

Nine volumes of government documents related to internment.

Hansen, Arthur A., ed. Japanese American World War II  Evacuation Oral History Project. Westport: Meckler, 1991.

Five volumes of oral history related to Japanese internment.

Higa, Karin M. The View From Within: Japanese American Art from the Internment Camps, 1942-1945. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 1992.

Collection of art produced by Japanese Americans in internment camps.

Internment and Evacuation of Japanese Americans, 1942

Collection of 1942 newspaper articles which details the evacuation of the Japanese from
San Francisco and other West Coast cities, provided by the San Francisco Museum.
http://www.sfmuseum.org/war/evactxt.html

Japanese American Internment Camps During WWII.

Photos from internment camps provided by the University of Utah’s Special Collections.
http://www.lib.utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/9066.htm

Japanese Camp Newspapers. Washington: Library of Congress, 1977.

Twenty-two reels of microfilm of internment camp newspapers.

Japanese Relocation. 11 m. 1982. Videorecording.

Originally issued as motion picture in 1943. Presents the U.S. government's official explanation for the removal of 110,000 persons of Japanese descent from the Pacific Coast and their relocation in Arizona, Colorado, and Wyoming. Available in IMC VIDEOTAPE
00284

Okada, John. No-No Boy. Rutherford, Vermont:  Charles E. Tuttle, 1957; reprint, Seattle: Univeristy of Washington Press, 1979.

Fictional account of a Nisei’s struggle during and after WWII.

Okubo, Mine. Citizen 13660. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1983.

A narrative of life in an interment camp, with drawings by the author.

U.S. Army. Final Report, Japanese Evacuation from the West Coast, 1942. Washington, D.C., GPO, 1943.

Examples of Secondary Sources:

Matsumoto, Valerie J. Farming the Home Place: A Japanese American Community in California, 1919-1982. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1993.

A scholarly study of a Japanese American community before, during and after WWII, based on oral history interviews.

Takaki, Ronald. Democracy and Race: Asian Americans and World War II. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1995.

Discusses the historical experience of several Asian American groups during WWII.