Blackface Behind Barbed Wire: Gender and Racial Triangulation in the Japanese American Internment Camps

2013 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Roxworthy
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Us History ◽  
Japanese American Internment ◽  
Racial Impersonation ◽  
Blackface Performance

In a dark footnote to a dark chapter in US history, Japanese Americans interned by their own government during World War II performed in blackface behind barbed wire. Exploring blackface performance in the camps raises questions regarding the potential resistance of racial impersonation and blackface's potential for triangulating race.

Nature Behind Barbed Wire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie Y. Chiang
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Us History ◽  
War Relocation Authority ◽  
The Social ◽  
Japanese Ancestry

The mass imprisonment of over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II was one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in US history. Removed from their homes on the temperate Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans spent the war years in ten desolate camps in the nation’s interior. Although scholars and commentators acknowledge the harsh environmental conditions of these camps, they have turned their attention to the social, political, or legal dimensions of this story. Nature Behind Barbed Wire shifts the focus to the natural world and explores how it shaped the experiences of Japanese Americans and federal officials who worked for the War Relocation Authority (WRA), the civilian agency that administered the camps. The complexities of the natural world both enhanced and constrained the WRA’s power and provided Japanese Americans with opportunities to redefine the terms and conditions of their confinement. Even as the environment compounded their feelings of despair and outrage, they also learned that their willingness (or lack thereof) to transform and adapt to the natural world could help them endure and even contest their incarceration. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the Japanese American incarceration was fundamentally an environmental story. Japanese Americans and WRA officials negotiated the terms of confinement with each other and with a dynamic natural world.

The Interrogator

2019 ◽  
pp. 123-168
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Internment Camps ◽  
Japanese American Internment ◽  
The Past ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War

This chapter begins the story in the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, and follows how the Japanese American subject moved from being an “enemy alien” under surveillance to laboring as an interrogator of Koreans during the Korean War. It reconstructs the types of interrogation rooms these Japanese American interrogators invented, what they resisted, and what they reinterpreted. In contrast with the interrogation rooms of the past that were cloaked in darkness, secrecy, and violence, the US military interrogation room was now supposedly an idealized site of regulated and willing exchange between the interrogator and the interrogated prisoner.

Habeas Corpus Today

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda L. Tyler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Habeas Corpus ◽  
World War ◽  
Japanese American Internment ◽  
Guantanamo Bay ◽  
Executive Authority ◽  
Enemy Combatant

The experience of World War II and the precedent of the Japanese American internment dramatically altered the political and legal landscape surrounding habeas corpus and suspension. This chapter discusses Congress’s enactment of the Emergency Detention Act of 1950 along with its repeal in 1971. It further explores how in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, questions over the scope of executive authority to detain prisoners in wartime arose anew. Specifically, this chapter explores the Supreme Court’s sanctioning of the concept of the “citizen-enemy combatant” in its 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld and evaluates Hamdi against historical precedents. Finally, the chapter explores how Hamdi established the basis for an expansion of the reach of the Suspension Clause in other respects—specifically, to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Foundations for a New World Order: Uniting Protestant Worship during the World War II Japanese American Incarceration

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-316
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
New World Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

During the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, visions of a peaceful new world order led mainline Protestants to manipulate the worship practices of incarcerated Japanese Americans ( Nikkei) to strengthen unity of the church and nation. Ecumenical leaders saw possibilities within the chaos of incarceration and war to improve themselves, their church, and the world through these experiments based on ideals of Protestant ecumenism and desires for racial equality and integration. This essay explores why agendas that restricted the autonomy of racial minorities were doomed to fail and how Protestants can learn from this experience to expand their definition of unity to include pluralist representations of Christianity and America as imagined by different sects and ethnic groups.

Ballad for Incarcerated Americans: Second Generation Japanese American Musicking in World War II Camps

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTA ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
American Popular Music

AbstractDuring World War II, the United States government imprisoned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens, half of whom were children. Through ethnographic interviews I explore how fragile youthful memories, trauma, and the soundscape of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) Incarceration Camps shaped the artistic trajectories of three such former “enemy alien” youth: two pianists and a koto player. Counterintuitively, Japanese traditional arts flourished in the hostile environment of dislocation through the high number ofnisei(second generation) participants, who later contributed to increasing transculturalism in American music following resettlement out of camp. Synthesizing Japanese and Euro-American classical music, white American popular music, and African American jazz, manyniseiparadoxically asserted their dual cultural commitment to both traditional Japanese and home front patriotic American principles. A performance of Earl Robinson and John Latouche's patriotic cantata,Ballad for Americans(1939), by the high school choir at Manzanar Incarceration Camp demonstrates the hybridity of these Japanese American cultural practices. Marked by Popular Front ideals,Ballad for Americansallowedniseito construct identities through a complicated mixture of ethnic pride, chauvinistic white Americanism allied with Bing Crosby's recordings of theBallad, and affiliation with black racial struggle through Paul Robeson's iconicBalladperformances.

The 1942 Santa Anita Detainment Center Labor Strike and Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-316
Author(s):  
Stephanie Hinnershitz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Worker Safety ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Disputes ◽  
Labor Strike

This article studies a brief strike by Nikkei incarcerees at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in 1942. Employed in the industrial production of camouflage nets, the imprisoned Japanese Americans staged a strike over pay, worker safety, and rights. Without previous guidelines, the center’s administrators had to devise a resolution to this halt in the production of war materiel. The Santa Anita netmakers' strike and its resolution provided a foundation for handling labor disputes at the permanent WRA camps later. The author identifies the administration, division of labor, pay, and unsafe work conditions, along with the strike leadership, management’s response, and the outcome of the strike.

The Movement for Japanese American Redress

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Asaka
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Redress Movement

The Japanese American Redress Movement refers to the various efforts of Japanese Americans from the 1940s to the 1980s to obtain restitution for their removal and confinement during World War II. This included judicial and legislative campaigns at local, state, and federal levels for recognition of government wrongdoing and compensation for losses, both material and immaterial. The push for redress originated in the late 1940s as the Cold War opened up opportunities for Japanese Americans to demand concessions from the government. During the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese Americans began to connect the struggle for redress with anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements of the time. Despite their growing political divisions, Japanese Americans came together to launch several successful campaigns that laid the groundwork for redress. During the early 1980s, the government increased its involvement in redress by forming a congressional commission to conduct an official review of the World War II incarceration. The commission’s recommendations of monetary payments and an official apology paved the way for the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and other redress actions. Beyond its legislative and judicial victories, the redress movement also created a space for collective healing and generated new forms of activism that continue into the present.

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