Lessons from a Different Shore: Portrayals of Japanese American Incarceration and the Redress Movement by Western European Newspapers

Abstract

The history of Japanese American incarceration is traditionally framed as one of the bleakest chapters in twentieth-century US history. Yet interest in the story of Japanese Americans and the lessons of the incarceration are not limited to the United States or the Japanese diaspora. This article examines media reactions to the story of the Japanese American incarceration and the redress movement of the 1980s in four Western European countries—the Netherlands, United Kingdom, West Germany, and France. In each country, media outlets discussed the redress movement and the Japanese American experience, larger issues of racism within the United States, and financial compensation for war victims. In doing so, these media accounts both dramatize the nature of public opinion on the subject of reparations and touch on larger debates on the collective memory of the Holocaust and colonialism that were emerging in Western Europe.