After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics

Introduction

1 This book illuminates various aspects of a central but unexplored area of American history: the midcentury Japanese American experience. A vast and ever-growing literature exists, first on the entry and settlement of Japanese immigrants in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century , then on the experience of the immigrants and their American-born children during World War II.1 Indeed, the official roundup of some 120,000 American citizens and permanent residents of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast and their subsequent confinement in government camps (often, if imprecisely, called the “Japanese American internment”) represents the single most-documented subject in Asian American studies and a vital theme of popular debate. Yet the essential question “What happened afterwards?” remains all but unanswered in historical literature.2 Such neglect is unjust, as the postwar evolution of Japanese American communities deserves extended and careful study. Excluded from the wartime economic boom and scarred psychologically by their wartime ordeal, the former camp inmates struggled to remake their lives in the years that followed , and to build new social ties and community structures. If the generation of resettlement and renewal that followed the release of inmates from camp lacks the massive drama and conflict of the wartime events, it must be accounted equally important, if not more so, in setting the course of mainland Japanese American life.3 This volume consists of a series of case studies, in the form of essays. They shed light on various developments relating to Japanese Americans in the aftermath of their wartime confinement, including resettlement nationwide, the mental and physical readjustment of the former inmates, and their political engagement, most notably in concert with other racialized and ethnic minority groups. In the process, I explore and test various Introduction 2 / Introduction conclusions about the nature and particularity of the postwar Japanese American experience. The bulk of the material in the collection is previously unpublished, or in a few cases has appeared only in French-language editions—the latter element a product of the author’s life in Montreal, a North American city at the crossroads of anglophone and francophone scholarship. Even the fraction that has already seen print in some form has been expanded and updated to take account of new research and scholarship . The text, it will be noted, does not follow a strict chronology, but takes up in turn a set of key themes that shaped Japanese communities during the midcentury period. While the focus is on postwar events, some of the chapters begin chronologically in the prewar or wartime period in order to provide proper background and context for understanding what occurred thereafter. This collection is not intended to be either definitive or comprehensive. Rather, the work represents something of a new departure, a broad-based investigation of a complex and largely uncovered subject, designed to provide an opening for further inquiry and more extended discussion. Like all generalizations, my exposition is limited and admits of exceptions. It is my fervent hope that the volume will help move scholars in history, political science, law, ethnic studies, and other fields to engage the primary material available on postwar Japanese Americans and fill the sizable gaps that exist in the literature.4 My case studies are limited, and my conclusions are thus necessarily tentative. As the late historian Winthrop Jordan remarked about his audacious findings on the origins of racism, “I shall be enormously surprised—and greatly disappointed—if I am not shown to be wrong on some matters. . . . Some, but not too many.”5 I certainly make no greater claim to infallibility. I wish here to outline the direction of the work that follows by describing briefly its central themes. The first theme that I discuss is the generational shift in the structure of group leadership, as the Issei leaders who had dominated Japanese communities in the prewar years were displaced from authority by the Nisei. The plight of the Issei after 1941 was poignant. Barred from citizenship by their adopted land, the immigrants were thereby transformed at a stroke into “enemy aliens” by the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan, and exposed to arbitrary restrictions. Virtually all community leaders were interned by the Justice Department for indeterminate periods, while the rest were confined in government camps with their families or fellow bachelors, then further humiliated by official directives barring noncitizens from community government positions . Forced to dispose of the bulk of their property at the time of...