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5. From Barbed Wire to Bootstraps: Freedom and Community in Cold War America
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chapter five Freedom and Community in Cold War America In April 1944 Fortune magazine warned readers that “the ‘protective custody’ [of the Japanese] of 1942 and 1943 cannot end otherwise than in a kind of Indian reservation, to plague the conscience of Americans for many years to come.”1 The War Relocation Authority (wra) had the same concerns; throughout the political tumult of the segregation crisis, the Wakasa incident, and the general strike, Topaz’s resettlement program continued apace. It took no time at all for wra officials to change their policy from containment of the Japanese masses to dispersal of individuals and small nuclear families to live as selfsufficient Americans. As dramatically as the hot war turned cold in 1945, the government’s view of its “ideal cities” shifted from social engineering marvel to political and economic scourge. The depopulation current grew stronger as discussions about Indian reservations turned from lamentations over poor conditions to fear that the United States was operating Communist enclaves within its own borders. Vanport and Los Alamos raised no fewer concerns; in the postwar era, no one wanted a potential “welfare colony” full of people one tended to associate with prewar Communism. By 1953 liquidation fever had spread to the House and Senate Committees on Indian Affairs, spurring legislation to terminate treaty relationships and 214 | From Barbed Wire to Bootstraps “emancipate” Native people by dissolving their reservations. Cold War freedom was centered squarely in individualism; government sponsored collectivism of any kind was, in this new political environment, read as a rejection of Americanism—and of America itself. Yet it was hard for government agencies to get past the fact that these populations had been isolated for what they once saw as very good reasons. Ostensibly, the nation’s security and the project of making good citizens relied on these out-of-the-way, government-run colonies. Unwilling to fully abandon their functions as overseers and caretakers, the agents in charge of America’s inverse utopias refashioned their paternalist relationships with their wards as they ventured out to the mainstream. They took clear, deliberate measures to extend their ties into the world outside the perimeter, but when it came to determining when and how to cut those ties, tensions between the agencies, the residents, and the American public became immediately evident. Leaving Topaz, Vanport, Los Alamos, and Klamath was far more complicated than simply packing up and moving on; it demanded extensive negotiations about how long federal paternalism would govern one’s life. The question first arose at Topaz in 1943, when the wra granted leaves to college students for whom the Japanese American National Student Relocation Council had arranged transfers to eastern schools. For these Nisei, the prospect of living outside the barbed wire was a glorious one, but college life would not bring complete freedom. Topazians at eastern universities would be free to study what they wanted, but decisions to move, transfer, drop out, or visit their parents at Topaz required the wra’s approval, which it was unlikely to grant.2 Although the Student Relocation Council steered Nisei students toward supportive campus organizations and local congregations, it could not shield them from the myriad forms of prejudice that made their education “a tangle of opportunity and oppression.” Yoshiko Uchida felt guilty about leaving her parents and her second-grade classroom behind when she left Topaz to resume her education at Smith College. Uchida found tentative acceptance, but she arrived in the wake of another Topazian whose enrollment was met with calls for her immediate expulsion as a Japanese. More tolerant colleges allowed Topaz students to be full [54.196.27.122] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:08 GMT) From Barbed Wire to Bootstraps | 215 participants in campus life once they rejected their Japanese heritage. Mary Iijima received the ultimate “compliment” that she was “just like an American” with mixed feelings of flattery, relief, and shame. In spite of the difficulties, students had the best chance at fully recovering from the internment. As youngsters, the Nisei took fewer financial losses in the evacuation process, while resettlement channeled them toward good jobs, increased their social and cultural capital, and integrated them into civil-libertarian networks.3 wra director Myer, hoping to build on the success of the student relocation program, expanded the pool of prospective relocatees to include “safe” agricultural and industrial workers. Defense industries and growers outside the Western Defense Command lined up to recruit workers to relocate for employment in their...