Those of you who previously explored our article on the Hoji Shinbun Digital Collection – Japanese Diaspora Initiative may also be interested in a collection of Nikkei newspapers digitized and openly available through the university libraries of the University of Washington. From their website:

The Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive (NNDA) is a project of the Hokubei Hochi (North American Post) Foundation and the University of Washington Libraries. Our goal is to make accessible two significant newspapers which tell the story of Japanese immigration and Japanese American community life in Seattle and beyond, from 1902 to 1950, and continuing to the present day. The newspapers, North American Times (1902-1942) and North American Post (1946-1950), were published primarily in Japanese, with occasional, and then regularly appearing, pages published in English.

North American Post, 1946-08-28

Browsing the collection you have standard keyword search options and fields you can use to narrow your explanation, or you can just flip through the dozens of newspaper scans. There are also pages with more information on the newspapers themselves as well as on the process of digitizing the collection.

In addition to the uploaded content, for some issues there are translations into English of the captions for front page stories, diagrammed onto their actual location on the newspaper page, which is a fascinating glimpse into the immediate topics of interest for readers:

Their resources page also offers an essay on the history of US-based Japanese newspaper publications and the collections held at the University of Washington.

So if you’re interested in modern US-Japanese history and the history of Japanese American communities, go exploring in the Nikkei Newspapers Digital Archive!