The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration

Abstract

This book maps the terrain of memory in the wake of large-scale injustice, using five case studies of how the unjust wartime imprisonment of Nikkei in North America has reverberated in both Canada and the United States over the past six decades: politically engaged sociological writing in the 1960s and 1970s, the rise of personal disclosure during American efforts at redress, the political and cultural questions that arose in Canadian redress work, the ritualized commemoration of suffering in the Manzanar pilgrimages and in the codification of Fred Korematsu Day, and the pursuit of retroactive diplomas for Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians forced from their high schools, colleges, and universities in 1942. Building on these case studies, the book offers a transnational study of how Nikkei strive not to lay their past to rest, but instead to perpetuate it in ways that encourage direct, empathetic, and muscular political engagement across often profound cultural and political divides. In this respect, it follows a particularly important thread that binds people together, allows them to coexist, and, thereby, to become more fully human.

“Forever foreigners”: Intergenerational impacts of historical trauma from the World War II Japanese American incarceration.

“…The congressional commission that investigated the incarceration identified a range of Nisei postwar responses: selfblame and feelings of racial inferiority and avoidance; keeping a low profile; proving themselves to broader U.S. society; distrusting White America and preferring to associate with other Japanese Americans or, conversely, identifying with White America and avoid ing associations with Japanese Americans (USCWRIC, 1997). Some even shunned products made in Japan; for example, they only bought American cars (Inouye, 2016;Nagata et al, 2019). At the same time, Nisei also demonstrated a strong push toward achievement that was fueled by both the practical need to move forward and a Japanese sense of giri (i.e., obligation) to "clear their name of insult and shame" (Weglyn, 1976, p. 273).…”

The Japanese American wartime incarceration: Examining the scope of racial trauma.

“…Avoidance of their connection with Japan served as one way to cope with the wartime experience and racist realities of the larger society. Some Nisei shunned all products manufactured in Japan; for example, buying only American car brands (Inouye, 2016; Nagata, 1993). Others avoided associating with fellow Japanese Americans to blend in.…”

“…However, the movement to address the injustice was part of a much longer trajectory shaped by other social forces. Collective silence can mute the past but suppressed traumatic experiences still result in experiences of "haunting," a term Inouye (2016) used to describe the lingering feelings of disturbance that can persist across generations and eventually propel collective actions, as with the redress movement. Those who drive the processing of cultural trauma often come from the next generation, a "carrier group" that brings to public attention the significance of the trauma as situated in the larger social structure (Alexander, 2004).…”

Education Denied: Indiana University's Japanese American Ban, 1942 to 1945

“…164 But the implicit charge that "they had not deserved their place in the educational system" remained part of the historical record both of West Coast institutions that denied them degrees and midwestern institutions that refused to admit them. 165 In the 1990s, Nisei sought retroactive diplomas from the West Coast institutions from which they had been forced to withdraw in an effort to mitigate the injustice they suffered. Their stated goal was to "reclaim the ground from which they were expelled, to secure acknowledgement of their intellectual and social value as individuals," and, through an act which would bring the lessons of history alive, "imagine a different, more equitable future."…”