I select the Collection of Material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956 bulk 1942-1946 for its significance in reflecting the history of Japan–United States relations. This collection includes primary source in the forms of publications, press releases, yearbooks, pamphlets, speeches, clippings of published articles, masters’ theses, artistic sketches, etc. With an emphasis on the Manzanar and Minidoka internment camps, those materials, mainly documented the history of Japanese Americans, relocation, and internment during 1942-1946. And they were originally created by U.S. Department of the Interior War Relocation Authority (WRA) and by Japanese American internees and advocacy groups.
The materials have been organized and categorized into five boxes of different themes: two boxes for War Relocation Authority from 1942-1946, one box for internment camps from 1942-1945 and one box for miscellaneous from 1929-1956. The fifth box contains a poster recruiting to build a new Tokyo. If the first two boxes tell a narrative on the policies, social opinions and propaganda from the perspective of the government, the third box from the internment narrates the life of the internment from the internees’ perspective and the last miscellaneous box supplements the former two narratives.
This collection first tells us how the government planned, controlled, and inspected the internment camps with their quarterly and semi-annual reports. It took the government some time to choose the locations for the internment and gather the statistics of the employees’ and internees’ life within internment camps. Besides segregating the Japanese Americans, the camps attempted to mobilize, educate, convert and entertain the internees. Special attention had been paid to riots and violence in the camps. Those reports ended in 1946 with the closure of the Tule Lake relocation center.
The collection also demonstrates how the high officials updated their political opinions and explained the policies of relocating and resettling the Japanese Americans during the course of war. On the one hand, the government realized there had been riots within the camps and anti-Japanese American sentiments over the States. On the other hand, from the speeches, they also took pains to regulate Japanese Americans and ease their discontent. Positive examples such as Ben Kuroki had been set to show many Japanese-Americans’ loyalty to the U.S.
How the young Japanese-Americans grew up during and after the relocation formed anther narrative. Yearbooks from high schools in the relocating areas and all kinds of reports on “Nisei,” namely the second generation Japanese-Americans, portrayed a growing group announcing a disconnection from the older generations, their fusion into the American society and loyalty to the U.S. Meanwhile, the materials mentioned the racist prejudice that Japanese-Americans experienced during this period.
After reading the finding aid, I think the “Issei,” namely the first generation Japanese immigrants, were largely ignored. Perhaps because the awkward political and social position they were situating in during this period their stories and opinions were not included in the documents by the government or local institutions. To remedy this lacking, we need personal memoirs, pictures and oral history from individual first generation Japanese-Americans. Materials from Japan on the issues of relocating and resettling Japanese-Americans may also deserve a position in the collection.
There are many other mysteries that had not been solved by this archive. What was the background of the donors Ralph P. Merritt and Bradford Smith? Were they employees of the government so they had access to the governmental documents? Or did they have a strong interest in the internment so they keep collecting all the relevant materials over the years? Why did they donate this collection to UCLA? To answer those questions, a clearer “Provenance/Source of Acquisition” could be written which could include a brief introduction to the donors and to the historical period where they gathered the sources.
Really nicely done, Baoli. You examined this collection very closely and made some very perceptive observations about its selection and arrangement.
I really liked your in-depth analysis of the finding aid and your questions at the very end of your blog post that I didn’t even come to think of. I do agree that it lacks personal content about the Japanese immigrants. However, I guess it demonstrates the idea of a narrative in which the Japanese weren’t properly represented.