Assessment of waste grain densities to aid waterfowl conservation in the Klamath Basin of northeastern California and southeastern Oregon

Post-harvest waste seed from cereal grains is a major dietary component of waterfowl in the Klamath Basin in northeastern California and southeastern Oregon, a region that plays host to over a million waterfowl annually. Understanding food abundance is critical to local waterfowl management, therefore we conducted a study in 2008 to investigate waste grain densities in barley, oat and wheat fields. We used hierarchal mixed effect models to assess several factors that may affect waste grain densities post-harvest. We also compared the effects of residue management practices to measure the effect of these treatments. To understand the scope of post-harvest practices, we conducted a weekly road survey to document treatments applied to fields in our study area. We found that, region, best explained the variance of post-harvest waste grain in barley fields, where the Tule Lake region had 89% greater densities than Lower Klamath. Neither harvester age or baling affected waste grain in oats fields. In wheat fields, the model containing region and lodging ranked highest, where the Tule Lake region had 66% greater waste densities than Lower Klamath and lodging increased waste grain by 70%. Burning did not reduce waste grain in barley or oat fields. Chisel-disking reduced waste grain by 94% in wheat fields, compared to post-harvest. Our field treatment survey found that 70% of barley fields were untreated while 18% were disked and 13% were burned and flooded. We estimated that 82% of oat fields were burned post-harvest while 18% were burned and flooded. In wheat, 61% of fields were left untreated, while 16% were disked, 8% were chisel-plowed and 7% were flooded post-harvest. Flooding and burning occurred primarily on National Wildlife Refuges while disking, chisel-plowing and post-harvest irrigation occurred solely on private properties. Our results indicate that reducing tillage treatments would boost accessibility of cereal grain food resources to waterfowl in the Klamath Basin, and incentives to flood grain fields on private properties should be considered for the same purpose when and where possible.

Hiroshima/Vietnam/Tule Lake

The origin of Asian American political identity was not in cultural nationalism but in diasporic consciousness, most notably in the concept of solidarity with Third World peoples struggling against imperialism around the globe. The poetry of Janice Mirikitani juxtaposes locations from Vietnam to Zimbabwe to the Tule Lake internment camp, making transnational political solidarity prior to, not dependent upon, racial identification. In contrast, the anthology Aiiieeeee!, often cited as the origin of Asian American literary politics, emphasizes the integrity of the individual writer over communal identification. Restoring Mirikitani’s place in the history of Asian American literature also restores a coalitional, transnational vision of Asian American politics that lays the groundwork for a contemporary poetics of the Asian diaspora.

Walking the Places of Exception: The Tule Lake National Monument

In places of exception, human lives cease to be, as Judith Butler (2004) explains, “grievable” (p. 20). Places of exception take form in prisons, jails, concentration camps, immigration detention centers, Indigenous boarding schools, suspension rooms in schools, and the refugee camp. While their contexts and architectures vary, these places share a political logic and purpose, designed to exclude or contain persons and populations deemed security threats to the state (Agamben, 1998, 1999, 2005). Often located in remote areas, these sites permit persons to be stripped of certain rights and obligations. Their bodies are rendered vulnerable to harm and, in the most egregious cases, mass murder. Places of exception are part of the “cartographies of dispossession—the kind that rips away, distances, alienates” (Morrill & Tuck, 2016, p. 4). When such places fall out of use, their material structures are disassembled, relocated, and repurposed. Still, the vestiges of the camps remain: the foundation of a latrine, the ruins of a mess hall, the white shards of pottery. Walking these places of exception, we are haunted by the residue of the social violence that occurred in these sites (Gordon, 2008; Trigg, 2012).

Isolating Citizen Dissidents

This chapter details Kurihara's time in the Moab isolation camp. After their arrest in the wake of the Manzanar revolt, Kurihara and the other members of the Committee of Five were taken to the jail in Bishop, and after a few days, to Lone Pine. Their prosecution was held at bay, however, since WRA officials were able to secure a temporary isolation camp near the town of Moab, Utah. The Moab camp was designed specifically for Nisei, who, as U.S. citizens, could not be transferred to the enemy alien internment camps operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Within several months after the Manzanar sixteen had entered the Moab camp, other dissidents arrived from the Gila, Manzanar, and Tule Lake camps. No formal charges were made against any of these men either. Rather, they were sent at the discretion of the WRA camp project directors.

Turmoil at Tule

This chapter focuses on the Tule Lake concentration camp. Construction of the camp began in April 1942; in late May, five hundred Japanese American volunteers from the temporary detention camps at Portland and Puyallup arrived to help set up the camp. They were soon joined by Nikkei assigned to Tule Lake in the original peopling of the concentration camps. Within months, discontent over poor food and substandard living and farm-working conditions led to protests and strikes. This early discord escalated into a crisis during the loyalty-questionnaire fiasco of February 1943, which caused “fear, confusion, and utter chaos” among the Nikkei and resulted in the label of “disloyal” for those who gave “no” answers to one or both of the two contentious questions about their national loyalties or who refused to answer the questions.

Experiences of Christianity in the Camps

Incarcerated Christians frequently thanked God for giving them the strength to endure the incarceration and developed a variety of faith communities to provide additional support. The focus of Chapter Four turns away from church leaders to examine how lay (non-ordained) Christians experienced camp life. Buddhists joined Protestants and Catholics to organize interfaith memorial services for Nikkei soldiers killed in action, while pacifists and others resisted the military draft. This chapter expands the book’s focus to highlight Christian youth culture at a camp in Arizona and the hardships at Tule Lake, where incarcerees attacked Japanese Christians for cooperating with camp officials. The roots of Asian American theologies began growing in the camps in response to this rejection and suffering.