Book Review: Community Newspapers and the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps: Community, Not Controversy by Ronald Bishop With Morgan Dudkewitz, Alissa Falcone, and Renee Daggett

Abstract

Community Newspapers and the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps: Community, Not Controversy. Ronald Bishop With Morgan Dudkewitz, Alissa Falcone, and Renee Daggett. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2015. 372 pp. $110 hbk.One of the most controversial decisions ever rendered by the U.S. Supreme Court is Korematsu v. United States. There, the Court in 1944 upheld the internment of Japanese Americans and people of Japanese ancestry at 10 isolated relocation centers-more provocatively but accurately put, concentration or incarceration camps-scattered West of the Mississippi River. American-born citizen Fred Korematsu's conviction for violating Civilian Exclusion Order No. 34 by refusing leave San Leandro, California-a designated military area-was affirmed. It took another 44 years before reparations would be made after President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.If Korematsu and the camps are now viewed as dark days in the annals of American judicial and civil rights history, then they also weren't glorious ones for community journalism. Specifically, if the overarching thesis of Ronald Bishop in Community Newspapers and the Japanese-American Incarceration Camps: Community, Not Controversy is correct, then many of the journalists and editors working at the papers in the communities closest the camps shoulder responsibility for not railing against the egregiousness of the civil rights violations taking place and the shoddy living conditions inside.Instead, as Bishop concludes, their reportage often creates the indelible impression that the incarcerees props in a drama crafted sell residents on the economic promise of their incarceration. The economic benefits derived from the camps, in brief, often drove narratives and coverage in terms of what was and was not reported. Sins of both commission and omission, in other words, occurred. The book's subtitle-Community, Not Controversy-makes this thesis transparent. Local journalists typically tried to persuade readers be part of creating a reality in which the construction of the camps and the presence of the incarcerees would be an economic benefit their communities. As the rock duo David and David sang in 1986, All that money makes such a succulent sound, welcome the boomtown.Bishop, a professor in the Department of Culture and Communication at Drexel University who previously worked as a journalist and newspaper editor, collaborates with a trio of his former undergraduate students in writing three of the book's 10 chapters. They do a good job of contrasting the framing of issues by major daily newspapers with those of the community papers near the camps. For example, Bishop writes that daily newspaper coverage of the incarceration dehumanized the incarcerees, coverage by the community papers operationalized the incarcerees in order persuade readers their presence would not be disruptive and that they should therefore be allowed work on area farms. And while the West Coast dailies stoked fear of non-existent spying, the community journalists near the camps were on patrol for threats the potential for the region's economic recovery. …