Japanese Internment Research Articles

Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security

Reviewed by: Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security J. L. Anderson (bio) Growing American Rubber: Strategic Plants and the Politics of National Security. By Mark R. Finlay. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2009. Pp. xiii+317. $49.95. Japan's attack on the United States in December 1941 brought American dependency on foreign rubber into sharp and painful focus. Cut off from Asian supplies, how would the nation meet both military and civilian demand? Mark Finlay, professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University, describes the crisis of World War II and earlier efforts to find a domestic rubber crop that would prevent a rubber famine of the sort experienced during World War I. Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone, Henry Ford, a promising young army officer named Dwight Eisenhower, and many lesser-known entrepreneurs hoped to liberate the country from its dependence on foreign rubber. They experienced limited success and much failure in the interwar period. When fears about the lack of preparedness were realized after the attack at Pearl Harbor, the United States government responded by creating an Emergency Rubber Program. By the end of the war, however, the program had been canceled and the United States resumed its dependence on foreign rubber. Finlay argues that the search for domestic rubber "marks a transitional phase in the history of American technology and science" (p. 10). Prior to the crisis of World War II, the solution to the rubber problem was an agricultural one. During the war, the debate shifted even as work proceeded on agricultural solutions. Synthetic rubber was the new and improved temporary solution, while the long-term answer involved continued dependence on foreign rubber in the name of building trade and diplomatic ties around the world. [End Page 1033] Concern about U.S. vulnerability began during the Mexican Revolution and World War I and remained an issue in American public life through World War II. By the second decade of the twentieth century, rubber was no longer a marginal commodity in American life; it was central to the automobile industry and many others. The rubber famine of World War I subsided quickly, reflecting the brief involvement of the United States, but concerns flared again in 1922 when Great Britain cut East Indian rubber production and raised prices. Throughout this period, American businessmen and entrepreneurs searched for rubber plants that could be grown in the United States. Thomas Edison rose to the challenge, announcing that he would pursue the project as an act of national service with financial support from Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford. The Emergency Rubber Project, created in 1942, consisted of more than 1,000 scientists and tens of thousands of laborers who worked in Haiti and across the nation, including at the Japanese internment camp at Manzanar, to develop several plants into viable rubber sources. Domestic rubber lost the war to synthetic rubber, however. Even though domestic rubber accounted for 77 percent of American rubber production in 1943, 63 percent in 1944, and 39 percent in 1945, there were disadvantages to domestic rubber crops. Many of them could not be modified to produce suitable quantities or quality of rubber. Furthermore, synthetic rubber won favor with Americans who were enamored with industrial solutions, and, most important, the Roosevelt administration's commitment to internationalism made foreign rubber a tool of diplomacy and American engagement in the postwar order. Growing American Rubber is a significant contribution to many fields, not the least of which is the history of technology and science. Finlay deftly weaves stories of diplomacy, scientific research, interest-group politics, entrepreneurs, farmers, laborers, and the environment to tell the story of rubber-crop research in the first half of the twentieth century. He claims that the domestic rubber project "underscores the links between war and broader discussions about the relationship of scientific enterprise to geopolitics" as well as the "increasing level of state intervention into scientific, technical, and agricultural research" (p. 7). Readers will appreciate Finlay's meticulous research, demonstrating the local, regional, national, and international aspects of the quest for domestic rubber. That search, Finlay persuasively contends, is a relevant subject for today's policymakers. The success of...

Alien Intimacies: The Coloniality of Japanese Internment in Australia, Canada, and the U.S.

The incarceration of Japanese enemy aliens in concentration camps during World War II was a remarkably transnational phenomenon in Pacific settler colonies. Immediately following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the governments of Canada, the United States, and Australia set in motion the round up, removal, and incarceration of civilians of Japanese ancestry. Australia was first to implement extensive measures, rounding up nearly all Japanese individuals from Australia and surrounding nations within twenty-four hours of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Unlike Canada and the U.S., a wartime internment policy was already in place under the National Security Act of 1939, which provisioned for the wholesale internment of local Japanese civilians—mostly concentrated in northern pearling towns of Broome, Darwin, and Thursday Island—in the event of a declaration of war with Japan. The U.S., catapulted into war by the events of December 7, responded by seizing Japanese assets, sealing off the Can...

Double Displacement: Western Women's Return Home from Japanese Internment in the Second World War

This article examines the homecoming of Western women from Japanese internment camps at the end of the Second World War. It focuses on British women returning to the United Kingdom, but makes reference to women from other Allied nations such as the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. The paper argues that interned women posed contradictions to gendered understandings of wartime experience and that homecoming further exacerbated this ambiguity. Return from imprisonment exposed the dual meaning of home as the natural realm for women and a national space. Women internees had been away from both and were subjected to control by non-white men; responses to their liberation reflected these tensions. Homecoming prompted questions about released women's femininity and sexual integrity, but they faced even more difficulty having their war experiences recognised as part of a national story about war.

Cees Th. Smit Sibinga: An Autobiography

Cees Smit Sibinga was born in 1939 in Makassar in the former Dutch East Indies and spent the first part of his life in a Japanese internment camp. This experience was extremely important for the development of his attitude in and philosophy of life, in which a positive fighter spirit predominates. He subsequently studied medicine, specializing in clinical hematology, and then did his PhD at the University of Groningen. In 1976, he became the Regional Blood Bank Director for the northern part of the Netherlands, which he shaped into a model blood bank. Since 1976, for 28 years, he annually organized an international symposium on various aspects of blood transfusion. Areas of his investigations included the development of a freeze-dried cryoprecipitate preparation used for hemophilia treatment, cryopreservation of stem cells and platelets, and quality management. His academic focus then turned to the teaching and training of transfusion personnel in resource-limited countries.

Cees Th. Smit Sibinga

Cees Smit Sibinga was born in 1939 in Makassar in the former Dutch East Indies and spent the first part of his life in a Japanese internment camp. This experience was extremely important for the development of his attitude in and philosophy of life, in which a positive fighter spirit predominates. He subsequently studied medicine, specializing in clinical hematology, and then did his PhD at the University of Groningen. In 1976, he became the Regional Blood Bank Director for the northern part of the Netherlands, which he shaped into a model blood bank. Since 1976, for 28 years, he annually organized an international symposium on various aspects of blood transfusion. Areas of his investigations included the development of a freeze-dried cryoprecipitate preparation used for hemophilia treatment, cryopreservation of stem cells and platelets, and quality management. His academic focus then turned to the teaching and training of transfusion personnel in resource-limited countries.

<i>Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process Mildred L. Jackson Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process. Edited by Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. 192 pp. $35.00. ISBN 978-0-8093-2840-2. What draws a scholar to his or her research project? What compels one to write a monograph or an article on a particular subject? Editors Gesa E. Kirsch and Liz Rohan posit that "how a researcher chooses a subject is a subject itself" (1). In Beyond the Archives: Research as a Lived Process they gather essays by eighteen authors representing several disciplines, who reveal the ways in which passion, personal connections, and serendipity connect them to recent research projects. Authors have stumbled across information in the process of other research, in their grandmothers' attics, and in conversations. All of these bits of information lead to serious and thoughtful research. The connections between the research and the discovery are often personal and demonstrate how our research is often intimately related to who we are. Barry Rohan discovered papers revealing his grandfather's role as a prominent activist in an actors' union called the White Rats in an old trunk. Through the discovery of old playbills and other material Rohan uncovered not only a piece of family history but also the basis for a piece of public history. Gail Y. Okawa filled in the gaps from her grandfather's life and discovered untold stories of Japanese internment camps in Santa Fe. Authors reveal what they learned about themselves and about their families by following the trail of something that did not seem serious enough at first to warrant a book or an article. The passion and creativity that result from the projects are evident in the essays. The book is organized thematically, according to the topics of creativity, personal experience and family history, politics, and how our research subjects parallel our own lives. Each author came to his or her topic in a different way, and each used archival research in a different way. David Gold discusses becoming an accidental archivist, a theme that runs through many of the essays. Gold states that working in archives is "like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, except that you don't have a picture on the box for reference, there's more than one puzzle in the box, the pictures keep changing depending on how you fit the pieces together, and the pieces themselves change shape when your back is turned" (15). The essays build on the importance of archives but reach well beyond the physical archives found in libraries and museums. Archives are found in boxes in closets and under beds. As Gold says, "We never know where an archive will lead" (18). The archive in the library is also important. Archival research adds additional layers and meaning to the items that inspired the authors in the first place. They [End Page 391] mention the importance of librarians who led them to vital resources and to the significance of reading the same texts their subjects read. Beyond the Archives is a delight to read and will inspire researchers to look for opportunities in unexpected places. The scholars have demonstrated that research can and does have personal relevance and is not merely a dry exercise. This is a volume that every researcher should read. Mildred L. Jackson University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa Copyright © 2009 University of Texas Press

“A Woman's World”: The University of California, Berkeley, During the Second World War

The fairer sex takes over and the campus becomes a woman's world. They step in and fill the shoes of the departing men and they reveal a wealth of undiscovered ability. The fate of the A.S.U.C. [Associated Students of the University of California] and its activities rests in their hands and they assume the responsibility of their new tasks with sincerity and confidence. —Blue and Gold, University of California, Berkeley, 1943During World War II, female students at the University of California, Berkeley—then the most populous undergraduate campus in American higher education—made significant advances in collegiate life. In growing numbers, women enrolled in male-dominated academic programs, including mathematics, chemistry, and engineering, as they prepared for home-front employment in fields traditionally closed to them. Women also effectively opposed gendered restrictions on extracurricular participation, filling for the first time such influential campus leadership positions as the presidency of Berkeley's student government and editorship of the university's student newspaper. Female students at Berkeley also furthered activist causes during the war years, with the University Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) serving as one of the most popular outlets for their political engagement. Historically rooted in a mission of Christian fellowship, by the 1940s the University YWCA held progressive positions on many of the nation's central social, political, and economic issues. Throughout the war years, women dedicated to promoting civil liberties, racial equality, and international understanding led the organization in its response to two of the most egregious civil rights violations in U.S. history: racial segregation and Japanese internment.

Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China, 1941–1945 (review)

Reviewed by: Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China, 1941–1945 Mark Wilkinson Captives of Empire: The Japanese Internment of Allied Civilians in China, 1941–1945. By Greg Leck. Bangor, Pa.: Shandy Press, 2006. ISBN 0-9772141-0-9. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Pp. xvii, 738. $115.00. In 1941 the Japanese not only erupted across the Pacific against American and British military forces, they also swept through colonial enclaves in China from Hong Kong to Harbin, where thousands of “enemy” civilian nationals suddenly found themselves “in the bag.” Over 13,000 men, women and children who had come to China as a part of the western pursuit of profits, souls, or adventure in the prewar years were interned in two dozen camps in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and north China, including Greg Leck’s British mother and grandfather, who worked for the Chinese Maritime Customs Service. Leck started this project to learn his own family history, but has ended up compiling a detailed, respectful collective memoir of the internment camp experience, told largely in the words of the internees themselves. He has interviewed or corresponded with scores of survivors and consulted memoirs, camp diaries, correspondence, and official reports available in the Imperial War Museum, the National Archives, and elsewhere. Leck briefly surveys the “halcyon days” of prewar Shanghai and other foreign enclaves, and then describes how foreign communal agencies, such as the British Residents Association (BRA) helped their nationals navigate the uncertain period from the onset of war through actual internment, which occurred for most in 1942 through March 1943. Brief chapters survey different aspects of camp life, describing inadequate, cramped housing, food that was frequently spoiled or vermin-infested, and guards who were generally callous and inattentive to the needs of these thousands of non-combatants. Leck does not unduly demonize the Japanese authorities. But it is clear that in many camps, the captors co-opted and dominated supposedly independent elected camp councils. Some internees were indeed tortured or executed for real or imagined crimes. And the fear of such abuse hung over every confrontation about lousy food, communications with outsiders, and distribution [End Page 1316] of occasional Red Cross relief packages. A handful of internees did escape, but most languished in squalid conditions until liberation in August 1945. Leck captures the wide variety of residents, with former taipans, missionaries, beached sailors and itinerant entertainers scrabbling in trash heaps together looking for a few bits of unburned coal to use in their small, homemade stoves known as “chatties.” Generally, they tried to make the best of their circumstances. They schooled their children, maintained libraries, played sports, and entertained themselves as best they could. But there were also fights over food, graft, and camp love affairs. Leck’s overall thesis is that “In internment, they were an example of the strength of human endeavor in the face of adversity” (p. 26). The account is profusely illustrated throughout with photographs, line sketches, and watercolors of internees, camps, and all aspects of their constrained lives. Leck also describes each of the twenty-five camps, including diagrams, pictures and 200 pages of camp rosters, compiled with help from former internee Desmond Power. Leck has amassed a wealth of material on the internment experience. Hopefully he will deposit copies of his interviews and correspondence with a good archival facility, such as The China Hands Oral History Project, at California State University, Fullerton. Mark Wilkinson Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia Copyright © 2008 Society for Military History

Limited Knowledge

Limited Knowledge Robert Fyne Repicturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television. Michael Paris, Editor. Palgrave, 2007. 235 pages; $85.00 In the festive, nocturnal hours of January 12, 2005, a bright-eyed, twenty-yearold, third in line to the British crown partygoer, showed up at a Wiltshire costume ball dressed in a spiffy Nazi uniform much to the glee of some paparazzi lurking in the nearby shadows. Moving stealthily, these photographers soon spotted the gregarious prince soul-kissing another reveler, a smiling female, also dressed in Third Reich regalia. When these pictures appeared the next morning, on the front page of The Sun, under the headline, Harry the Nazi, the Royal family, who lived through the 1940 [End Page 93] Blitz, gasped. Why did Prince Harry behave so irresponsibly? Was he trying to impress the girls? Did he feel robust and daring wearing an Afrika Korps swastika? Or, was he simply another silly undergraduate playing the role of the big cheese? Within hours, Buckingham Palace proffered an apology. Young people—the monarchy lamented—have a limited knowledge of World War II. Why wouldn’t they? For many young people World War II resembles a distant blur, a shapeless, one-paragraph entry in some textbook, about forgotten places. And what about the heroes and villains? The opposing forces? Altering world history events? Did the conflict really matter or were they faded memories, resurrected like the Punic Wars, for end-of-the-semester examinations? But what about Prince Harry? Isn’t he hooked up to a cable television network? Doesn’t he watch World War II reruns? Did he enjoy Raid on Rommel? Probably. After all, he wore the North Afrika Korps outfit to the soirée. For Harry’s generation, popular movies probably explain everything. Want to learn about Pearl Harbor? Watch Tora! Tora! Tora! The Arnhem debacle? Check out A Bridge too Far. Need information about the Normandy invasion? Look at The Longest Day. But World War II motion pictures, like slow-moving lava, often change direction, creating revisionist storylines or facile interpretations. As Professor Michael Paris explains, “the Second World War has been shaped more by the moving image than by any other form of cultural transmission.” To expand his point, Professor Paris brings together fifteen wonderful essays in a 2008 anthology examining cinema and the global conflict. As an innovative study, Repicturing the Second World War offers contemporary interpretations about events that are now three decades old. Film titles such as Land Girls and Foyle’s War take a hard look at British home front life while Tea With Mussolini and Mediterraneo concentrate on Il Duce’s expansionism. Similarly, a French photoplay Safe Conduct and two German productions Aimée and Jaguar and Sophie Scholl detail life under the iron boot, while an American made-for-television drama, The Tuskegee Airmen, glorifies the exploits of an all-volunteer Black fighter squadron even though another U.S. production, Come See the Paradise takes some nasty swipes at Executive Order 9066, the federal law authorizing the Japanese internment camps. Finally, an HBO screenplay Conspiracy documents the infamous 1942 Wannsee Conference where top-ranking Nazis plotted the final solution while an Italian drama, Life is Beautiful and a French title, Train of Life approach the Shoah experience in a frivolous manner. On the Eastern Front, Enemy at the Gates contains many examples of post-Cold War politics and BBC’s Bomber Harris disputes the famed British general’s tactical air war against Germany while two other motion pictures, Saving Private Ryan and Downfall, examine the Normandy invasion and the Führer’s final days. In all, these essays reiterate the oft proclaimed notion that both motion pictures and television productions provide twenty-first century viewers their World War II history even though a great deal of superficial and inaccurate information emanates from these media. And with each passing generation—as the events of this global conflict edge toward oblivion—it comes as no surprise that a young man, who someday might wear the crown of England, would masquerade as a Nazi. Maybe the rubescent youth should take a look at Repicturing the Second World War. Why not...

The Life and Career of Justice Robert H. Jackson

Robert H. Jackson was one of the most influential Justices of the Supreme Court in the twentieth century. His tenure on the Court ran from 1941 to his death in 1954, and during that time he participated in landmark cases involving the programs implemented by Roosevelt's New Deal to rescue the country from Depression, having previously served the administration in other roles. He authored a memorable dissent in United States v. Korematsu, the notorious Japanese internment case.1 He is also remembered for the role he served as the chief American prosecutor before the International Military Tribunal that tried Nazi leaders after World War II. In some ways, Jackson's fierce independence and the lessons he learned growing up in a small town were the ideal training for the demands and competitiveness of the nation's highest Court. That Jackson's words and beliefs still have relevance in the twenty-first century is evidenced by the fact that both recent Supreme Court appointees quoted him during the confirmation hearings.2 In this essay, I will examine how Jackson's life experiences influenced his legal career and informed his jurisprudence, and to what extent Jackson lived up to his own vision of the role of a Supreme Court Justice.

Internowanie Japończyków w USA w czasie II wojny światowej. Próba nowego spojrzenia

Internowanie Japończyków w USA w czasie II wojny światowej. Próba nowego spojrzenia

The Life and Career of Justice Robert H. Jackson

The Life and Career of Justice Robert H. Jackson CONSTANCE L. MARTIN* Introduction Robert H. Jackson was one ofthe most influential Justices ofthe Supreme Court in the twentieth century. His tenure on the Court ran from 1941 to his death in 1954, and during that time he participated in landmark cases involving the programs implemented by Roosevelt’s New Deal to rescue the country from Depression, having previously served the administration in other roles. He authored a memorable dissent in United States v. Korematsu, the notorious Japanese internment case.1 He is also remembered for the role he served as the chiefAmerican prosecutor before the International Military Tribunal that tried Nazi leaders after World War II. In some ways, Jackson’s fierce independence and the lessons he learned growing up in a small town were the ideal training for the demands and competitiveness of the nation’s highest Court. That Jackson’s words and beliefs still have relevance in the twenty-first century is evidenced by the fact that both recent Supreme Court appointees quoted him during the confirmation hearings.2 In this essay, I will examine how Jackson’s life experiences influenced his legal career and informed hisjurisprudence, and to what extent Jackson lived up to his own vision ofthe role of a Supreme Court Justice. The Influence of a Small Town Born near the end of the nineteenth cen­ tury, Jackson was raised in southwestern New York State in a small town called Frewsburg. It was primarily a farming region, although the family’s business activities in­ cluded horse-breeding, which contributed to Jackson’s lifelong love of horses and out­ door sports. Jackson’s descriptions of Frews­ burg and Jamestown, a city fifteen miles away where Jackson later studied, emphasized the THE LIFE AND CAREER OF JUSTICE ROBERT H. JACKSON 43 communities’ core values of self-sufficiency and individualism. There was respect for those who worked hard, and distrust ofthose who did not. Jackson explained, “To an unfortunate in­ dividual there was utmost kindness, but if one was a pauper that was probably his own fault. He either drank, or gambled, or was lazy or something evil.”3 Jackson’s own family was thrifty, hard­ working, and even more independent than their neighbors: they were ‘“sturdy and un­ compromising Democrats’ in an area that was ‘overwhelmingly Republican.’”4 Although Jackson’s parents were not religious, they were nominal members of the local church and taught their son “to respect other people’s reli­ gion and never to start a religious argument.”5 He described his relatives as “practical people who were not carried away by either religious emotions or any other... [They were] too busy making a living, to work life’s annoyances up into a philosophy.”6 This individualism and re­ gional pride developed Jackson’s fundamental beliefin persistence and independent thought, and the conviction that hard work is ultimately rewarded. It is likely he was also influenced by the local justices of the peace, whom he saw dispensingjustice and whose “decisions repre­ sented the community’s collective idea of the decentthing.”7 A sense offairness would char­ acterize Jackson’s work in government, ad­ vancing and defending New Deal programs. Jackson’s Education Jackson is a transitional figure between two very different traditions oflegal education be­ cause he was the last Supreme Court Justice to have received the traditional law-office “ap­ prentice” training rather than a formal lawschool curriculum. Jackson’s determination to obtain more than the basic education avail­ able in Frewsburg sent him north to Jamestown for a post-graduate year of high school. He later spoke often and affectionately of the En­ glish teacher, Mary Willard, who befriended him there, encouraged him to read the classics and to debate and “to develop a notable ca­ pacity for writing and speaking clear, simple, direct English.”8 She was one ofthe most im­ portant influences of Jackson’s life, instilling in him not only a love of books but also legal ambitions.9 In 1911, while still attending school, Jackson began clerking part time in the Jamestown law offices of his cousin, Frank Mott, as had been the tradition for aspiring lawyers in...

Writing and Teaching behind Barbed Wire: An Exiled Composition Class in a Japanese-American Internment Camp

By reflecting on Japanese internment camps executed by the U.S. government in World War II, this article examines camp schools’ curricula and writing assignments and an English teacher’s response to student essays to show how racially profiled students and their Caucasian teacher negotiated the political meanings of civil rights and freedom.

Japanese Americans and the War in Colorado

Book Review| October 01 2007 Japanese Americans and the War in Colorado Nikkei Amerikajin to Senso: Rokujunengo No Shinjitsu: Kororado Nihonjin Monogataru, Eiichi Imada.Off the Fat of the Land: The Denver Post’s Story of Japanese Internment during World War II, Kumiko Takahara.Amache: The Story of Japanese Internment in Colorado during World War II, Robert Harvey.Koko Ga Watashi No Kokyo Desu: Kororado San Ruisu Bare Nihonjin Nyushokusha No Monogatari, Harumi Kato. Lane Ryo Hirabayashi; Lane Ryo Hirabayashi Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Kenichiro Shimada Kenichiro Shimada Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of American Ethnic History (2007) 27 (1): 75–79. https://doi.org/10.2307/40543256 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Kenichiro Shimada; Japanese Americans and the War in Colorado. Journal of American Ethnic History 1 January 2007; 27 (1): 75–79. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/40543256 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressJournal of American Ethnic History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2007 Immigration and Ethnic History Society2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

“You Don't Play, You Volunteer”: Narrative Public Memory Construction in Medal of Honor: Rising Sun

Narrative and ludological analysis suggests that Electronic Arts’ Medal of Honor: Rising Sun constructs a narrative of World War II that selectively retells history and constructs an Orientalist representation of the Japanese Empire. The gaming environment exists as an interactive museum that immerses gamers into history so that they experience warfare in their homes. Combining newsreels, fictional letters from home, and interviews with veterans of the “Good War,” Medal of Honor: Rising Sun retells a history that omits details of Japanese internment or atomic weapons. The intertwined themes of personal revenge for the loss of a family member and historical revenge for the attack on Pearl Harbor guide gamers through an “educational” experience of the war. Finally, its failure to simulate violence means that Medal of Honor: Rising Sun invites a critical blindness to commemorating war.

Captives of empire: the Japanese internment of allied civilians in China, 1941-1945

Captives of empire: the Japanese internment of allied civilians in China, 1941-1945

日本軍捕虜となったあるオーストラリア人の記憶 : 小説No Time to Look Backから

日本軍捕虜となったあるオーストラリア人の記憶 : 小説No Time to Look Backから

The Japanese Internment and the Racial State of Exception

The Japanese Internment and the Racial State of Exception Fred I. Lee (bio) The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything. — Carl Schmitt, Political Theology Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. — Franklin D. Roosevelt, Executive Order 9066 On February 19 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in the first of a series of decisions of fateful consequence for Japanese Americans during World War II. In the first weeks of the American involvement in the war, the state treated Germans, Italians, and Japanese alike as ‘enemy aliens.’ Based on lists compiled with the help of the 1940 Alien Registration Act, the FBI immediately arrested 1,700 potentially dangerous aliens the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Similarly, although the attorney general denied the Western Defense Command (WDC) permission to search “all alien homes” for the purposes of seizing potential tools of espionage and subversion, the Department of Justice ordered all enemy aliens in seven western states to surrender such items on December 29 1941.1 But the military actions authorized by Executive Order (EO) 9066 made sharp distinctions amongst enemy aliens: not only were Japanese aliens treated differently than German and Italian aliens, but in the evacuation and internment of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans from the Pacific Coast, some 70,000 citizens found themselves forcefully ‘alienated’ into the enemy category. It is apparent that for the state, the West Coast Japanese Americans — including the Issei (first generation aliens), the Nisei (second generation citizens) and the Kibei (Nisei educated in Japan) — were initially enemy aliens alike. Not yet fully realized is the significance of undoing this ‘lumping’ through later decisions on ‘splitting’ this population along different lines. To achieve this recognition, I will theorize the internment as a succession of sovereign decisions on the friend/enemy distinction coincident with a racial state of exception from which a state project of racial assimilation emerged. The stakes of this investigation then involve the identification of the very ‘what’ of the Japanese internment — for the Japanese internment, narrated in a more familiar form, is a story of rights and racism.. Along with assignations of responsibility, scholars have sought out the causes of the decision to displace and confine Japanese Americans in the major historiographical debate surrounding the internment.2 Hence this exceptional event in American history has been understood primarily in terms of the economic lobbying of white farmers on the Pacific Coast, the longstanding tradition of anti-Asian racism in the United States and closely related wartime hysteria over fifth column activity.3 Yet whatever the differences in historical explanations, the vast majority of scholars structure their narratives within what might be called the ‘necessity-rights circle’.4 The political question pursued by these inquiries is whether rights were justifiably or unjustifiably sacrificed by the military necessity invoked by Executive Order 9066, in which “the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national defense.” For example, Clinton Rossiter finds the internment “extremely disturbing” especially in the violation of “the most basic rights of a large group of American citizens.”5 This assessment might seem surprising coming from the defender of the doctrine of “Constitutional Dictatorship,” which states that “in times of crisis a democratic, constitutional government must be temporarily altered to whatever degree necessary to overcome the peril and restore normal conditions... the government will have more power and the people fewer rights.”6 But particularly perturbing is the fact that “the criterion for...

The Exception to the Rule

The unjust internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans and the detainment of Arabs and Muslims are representative of larger structures of racism in the United States. The state's task is to manage, maintain and, at times, sustain the racial other. As the racial other becomes viewed as outside the nation, the state can enact harsh measures of punishment, control, and surveillance with the support of the public. 9/11 reconfigured the racial hierarchy of the United States, which allowed the nation-state to dictate the behavior of its communities of color, informing communities about the proper ways of racialized citizenship. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, those perceived to belong to Arab and Muslim communities became transformed into an ideological, racial subject and are placed outside the concept of formal citizenship. Those who are construed as outside formal membership have their ability to perform citizenship reduced and the state sees it as its responsibility to detain the foreign insider/outsider.

Raising the Red Flag: The Continued Relevance of the Japanese Internment in the Post-Hamdi World

Most of what I have learned and internalized about the Japanese internment came from my mother, Mariko Hirata. My mother was just a young girl when her own government imprisoned her. Growing up, I heard all about the cold, the dirt, the embarrassing communal showers, the shame, and the guns. My mother painted a picture of her family’s perpetually dusty tar-paper shack, where they slept five to a room underneath oiled-paper windows in the dead of the Wyoming winter. At five years old, my mother played with the round horntoad droppings under the beds, believing they looked like little billiard balls. My mother recalled with ire observing her father taken away to pick potatoes, accompanied by armed soldiers. She related with sorrow the taunts of the white children from outside the barbed wire and fences, while like a Kafka-esque vision, she and other Japanese children saluted the American flag. She also told me about the prelude to and aftermath of