Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration

1. Introduction

ONE Introduction The more I think of it-as I get a little older-I think the damage done by the internment and the destroying of self-esteem, directly or indirectly, has really taken its toll, and it will take its toll for the next couple of generations. (Tomio Moriguchi, denshovh-motomio02 -00171) Soon afterJapanese fighter-bombers shocked the nation with their crippling attack on U.S. naval ships in Pearl Harbor, some IlO,OOO persons ofJapanese ancestry, the majority of whom were American citizens, were forcibly removed from their Pacific Coast homes and incarcerated in desolate camps in the interior of the country. Here they were held, on average, for two to three years before they were allowed to rejoin the society from which they had been abruptly and harshly removed. They suffered pernicious and disorienting attacks on their self-concept and identity; jarring upheavals to their family and community life, and, frequently, crippling economic losses. The fundamental causes of this monumental breach of constitutional rights, according to a congressional commission, were "Racism, wartime hysteria, and the failure of political leadership" (Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, 1997). More than sixty years have passed since that unprecedented suspension of civil rights took place. At the time of the uprooting and incarceration, about one-third of those detained were Issei or immigrant generation, and about two-thirds were Nisei, or American-born. Almost all ofthe olderfirst or Issei generation have now passed on. The majority of their children, the 3 4 INTRODUCTION American-born, second-generation Nisei, however, are still living. When they were excluded from the Pacific Coast, the average Nisei was about seventeen years ofage; most were children or young adults. Now, they are generally in their seventies and eighties. and some are even in their nineties. The aging of the Nisei is a serious concern for social scientists and historians , as this population constitutes the last remaining group who direcdy experienced the wartime exclusion and incarceration. Given the unprecedented nature of the forceful uprooting of this population during World War II, it seems imperative to preserve the experiences of those who were subjected to the event. Moreover, not only are their wartime experiences of great interest, but so are their accounts of how they reentered American society and reestablished themselves following their wartime trauma. Surprisingly , there have been few social scientific attempts to collect detailed information from a representative group of former incarcerees, a lacuna, no doubt, caused by the difficulties inherent in securing such information. Voluminous literature describes the expulsion ofJapanese Americans from the West Coast and their daily lives in the "internment"Z camps. During the war, the federal government collected extensive records about the incarcerees, and university-based researchers mounted numerous social scientific efforts to study the camps and their residents. Many researchers viewed the camps as massive "social laboratories" (e.g., Leighton 1945; Thomas 1952;Thomas and Nishimoto 1946; War Relocation Authority I946b, 1946c). After the war, many scholars extensively examined these and other records to document more clearly why the incarceration took place and evolved in the way that it did (e.g., Bosworth 1967; Broom and Kitsuse 1956; Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians 1997; Dani.els 1993; Daniels , Taylor. and Kitano 1991; Girdner and Loftis 1969; Weglyn 1976). A large-scale effort administered from UCLA. theJapanese American Research Project (JARP), collected historical, interview, and survey data during the 1960'S on Japanese Americans, many of whom had been incarcerated (e.g., Bonacich and Modell 1980; Levine and Rhodes 198I; Montero 1980). Nagata (1993) has examined communication about the incarceration between Nisei parents and their Sansei (third-generation) children. Further, a substantial number of narrative and autobiographical accounts that give personal views of the human impact of the incarceration have become available (e.g., Gorfinkel 1995; Hansen 1991; Harris 1999; Tateishi 1984; Uchida 1982). The majority of the foregoing studies. however, are either archival historical analyses or reports in which the authors extract and interpret accounts INTRODUCTION S provided by those who were in the wartime camps. The historically oriented works are invaluable as they chronicle the political, economic, legal. and administrative aspects of the incarceration. For their part, the personal narratives make available the human drama ofsome ofthose who were directly impacted. However, with the latter. one is uncertain of the extent to which these individual perspectives are representative ofthe larger group ofincarcerees. Even...