World War II and a Western Town: The Internment of the Japanese Railroad Workers of Clovis, New Mexico

1982 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 43
Author(s):  
John J. Culley
2021 ◽  
pp. 86-118
Author(s):  
Elliott Young

Seiichi Higashide was not an agent of the Japanese emperor or a pro-Axis immigrant, and yet he and more than 1,800 other Japanese Peruvians got caught up in a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria during World War II that led to their kidnapping, forced migration, and incarceration in hastily erected camps in Texas and New Mexico. Higashide and his family were detained as “illegal aliens” in an Immigration and Naturalization Service detention facility in Texas alongside thousands of other foreigners in other camps spread across the Southwest. After the war, Higashide and his family worked at Seabrook Farms, a food processing complex in New Jersey, which was essentially a prison work camp. In the 1950s, the Higashides became US citizens, but the trauma of detention and racism remains with the family. The Higashides’ story reveals the intersection between US empire, national security, and immigrant detention.


This chapter includes an interview with Rebecca Lemov on the history of anthropological collaboration. It discusses Lemov's dissertation on the history of collaborations created by anthropologists in the 1930s and 1940s that became known as the Human Relations Area Files. It also describes Lemov's work as a dream of achieving social control or human engineering through an advanced behaviorism via advanced behaviorist design. The chapter mentions Coordinated Investigation of Micronesian Anthropology, recognized as CIMA and SILA, which was done in Latin America during World War II as some of Lemov's projects. It talks about the Harvard Department of Social Relations Five Cultures project, which was an intensive study of five neighboring demarcated cultures in Ramah, New Mexico.


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