Class Blog

The Glen Keiser Collection is an archive of physical comic books, fantasy drawings, and other memorabilia from the 1940s to the 1980s. It includes comics published by DC, Marvel, and independent publishers. The comics are organized by publisher and then stored alphabetically. In total, there are 68 boxes in the collection, which contain both comics that are very famous and well-known today and comics that are extremely obscure. Other items in the collection include books about comics, mounted art, comic strip books, and other comic-related memorabilia such as T-shirts and cards. The finding aid for the collection gives details about the collection’s contents and time span, and lists every comic title in the collection according to which box they are stored in.

Comic books often mirror or discuss relevant social issues of the time they are published, such as wars, social and political unrest, race issues, and other current events. It is likely that reading these comics would provide some historical context for what people were feeling and thinking about during these time periods. It wouldn’t be explicitly stated, but by being able to read between the lines, media from historical time periods can be very illuminating when trying to understand a historical narrative.

However, this narrative would be told entirely from the perspective of the comic writers. It can be assumed that their opinions will be representative of at least a fraction of society at the time, but there will be many historical perspectives that won’t be represented – especially during time periods where women and ethnic minorities probably weren’t hired to write for major comic industries such as DC and Marvel (the 1940’s and 50’s at the very least).

The collection does include some independent comics that weren’t published by DC or Marvel. It is possible that some of these comics were  written by people who might provide very different perspectives from the mainstream, which would help to remedy a myopic historical narrative. If not, it might be worthwhile to incorporate into this collection comics that were explicitly written by people excluded from the mainstream narrative in order to provide different perspective. By including these kinds of comics from the same time period as the mainstream comics, it would be easier to piece together a historical narrative that would be much more true-to-life, and provide more than one viewpoint on historical events and cultural shifts.

I chose to examine the Finding Aid for the George Meyer The Simpsons script files. The physical collection is held at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA.­ The collection is an all-inclusive seventy-eight box file on all of George Meyers work on The Simpsons. The boxes contain script files for the television program from its second season through its sixth. They also include story notes, outlines, and various drafts of scripts written by Meyer.

There is a short biography included on the site before it delves into the manuscripts themselves. This biography of Meyer helps to put the rest of the site into context and allows the viewer to understand what inspired his creative process and the subject matter of his writings for The Simpsons. The biography tells of how Meyer graduated from Harvard in 1978 and was accepted into medical school but never enrolled. During his time at Harvard he began professionally writing for Lampoon and, shortly thereafter, took a job writing for the David Letterman Show. It goes on to detail how Meyer created some of Letterman’s signature bits which, with a knowledge of his work, can be deemed to have inspire aspects of plot lines in The Simpsons. He then took a few more writing jobs including one at Saturday Night Live and writing a magazine before he ultimately settled down and began to write the life of Homer Simpson. Using the biographical information that is provided in combination with a knowledge of The Simpsons and the rest of the collection, one can put together a narrative that can of Meyer’s artistic process and the key points in his life combined with the information gleaned from the collection.

Viewing the collection itself, one is presented with a vast array of scripts, story notes, and outlines from the show. The arrangement of the files appear haphazard because they are organized alphabetically rather than chronologically. A chronological list of the items would help clean up the appearance of the information and allow the reader to peruse it more readily. Additionally, it would shed light on Meyer’s development as a writer throughout his tenure with the show. Furthermore, beyond titles of documents and limited descriptions, the finding aid does not provide the viewer with extensive information of the works. The fact that so much is left wanting from the viewing of this collection takes away the ability of the viewer to construct an accurate narrative of Meyer’s work in context with his life.

Ultimately, this finding aid does an average job in presenting the viewer with information from George Meyer’s tenure as a writer for The Simpsons. While a lot of from his life can be learned from reading the biographical section, it remains difficult to accurately follow and put his work into context with his life.

 

In this collection, the primary source of data is material from the War Relocation Authority, a government agency that advocated for Japanese American “internment, resettlement, and enlistment in the armed forces…”, which can immediately be identified as an institution that is/was invested in maintaining narratives of Japanese internment as being justified. As such, those particular sources are likely to minimize, justify, or avoid discussing the losses and troubles of Japanese Americans who were interned.

However, it is somewhat assuaged by the other boxes, which include information from the perspective of Japanese American individuals who were interned, or who served in the military. These cover some issues such as facing racism in the armed forces, the anti-Japanese sentiment of the time, troubles with reintegration into their previous communities, and conditions within the camps themselves.

There are certain potential problems with these accounts as well. While not unilaterally so, there is a culture of shame and silence surrounding Japanese American internment, characterized by the phrase “shikata ga nai”, roughly translating to “there’s nothing to be done”. Values in the Japanese American community often privilege silence and a determined acceptance of unfair conditions, rather than advocacy or an attempt to raise complaints. There are many narratives from individuals whose parents or grandparents continue to refuse to even talk about the experience, let alone attempt to remedy them.

This presents a unique challenge to researchers in that, in many ways, neither party wishes to actually confront the facts of what happened in the Japanese American Internment Camps, and it would require deep, complex ties and sensitivity to the community to adequately understand and shape this narrative.

In his essay “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality”, Hayden White explores the central elements constituting a narrative. He states that a full narrative is achieved by “explicitly invoking the idea of a social system to serve as a fixed reference point by which the flow of ephemeral events can be endowed with specifically moral meaning” (White, 25). I would like to examine the contents of the finding aid on each “box” of collection about Japanese American internment, and argue that while the descriptions of certain box manifest certain traits within White’s judgement of a narrative, none can be defined as a full narrative.

Time reference can be found in each “box” of collections in the titles of the materials, but to a varying degree. Box 1 contains quarterly and semi-annual report on internment camps, and therefore lists the most accurate dates in chronological order, from “1942 October 1” to “1946 June 30”. Other 3 Boxes all have materials that are only labeled with year, and none of them is recorded chronologically. Therefore, only Box 1 exhibits the “flow of events” as described by White.

The characteristic of “a social system . . . as a fixed reference point” can also only be seen in Box 1. The reports on the internment camp build upon the framework of “general aspects of life in interment camps”, while the materials in other boxes describe a variety of social situations of Japanese internees.

Finally, “moral meaning” is implicated in the descriptions in Box 1. Words like “fears and anxieties” and “disturbance”, which suggest the fragile mental states of the internees and invoke readers’ sympathy for their circumstance, are implicitly taking a moral standpoint over the internment of Japanese Americans.

Based on the examination of connections between the descriptions of materials within the boxes of collections and the statement made by White, one may come to the conclusion that the descriptions in Box 1 constitute a complete narrative. However, one important element mentioned by White is missing. The descriptions in Box 1 do not “so much conclude as simply terminate” (White, 21). The description of the last material within the box simply states that the “report documents the end” of the agency that handled the interment of Japanese Americans, which implied the end of interment. However, the descriptions simple end without elaborating on the conclusions like the effects of the agency’s termination.

Therefore, the descriptions in Box 1 serves as an incomplete historical narrative that draws the general picture of the hardships of Japanese American internment but fails to wrap up as a story. An addition of conclusion such as the emotions of the internees or the social impacts of ending the internment can lead to the completion of the narrative.

For this week’s blog post, I chose to analyze the finding aid for the archive of materials from the American Japanese interment camps during WWII. Located in the Special Collections of UCLA’s Young Research Library, this collection contains four boxes and a map folder of information.

Off the bat, there is something very intriguing to me about naming the archive of Japanese internment materials “Collection of material about Japanese relocation,” which can be found under the label Title, and differs from the title at the top.  This idea of relocation is also seen in the War Relocation Authority, the government organization that headed the Japanese internment camp system and wrote many of the publications and press releases in the archive. In using the term relocation, rather than internment, it can be assumed that there might be governmental bias within the collection’s contents.  This is problematic, given that entirely honest narratives aren’t often given by the government.

The contents of the archive include press releases, newsletters, school yearbooks, speeches, pamphlets, etc. Two boxes, or half, of the archive come directly from the War Relocation Authority, which I assume is due to the controls on communication and message dispersal placed on internees.  Even the yearbooks and newsletters would have likely needed approval by the War Relocation Authority.  Many of the documents mention what the experience of living in the camps was like, which could help build narratives around that. Surprisingly, according to summaries in the finding aid, the documents also contain information regarding resistance against the camps and prejudice experienced by Japanese Americans, which could deepen these narratives in ways I hadn’t expected.

The data in this archive, while detailed, may not give a full picture of the reality of the time.  For example, Box 2, Folder 11 contains articles from multiple newspapers regarding the bravery of Japanese American soldiers during WWII. Because newspapers are focused on readership, this could be a signal of positive attitudes towards Japanese Americans, so perhaps these articles wouldn’t have offended America. However, on the other side, the newspapers felt a need to publish these articles that would boost the image of Japanese Americans and their loyalty, which could also identify negative attitudes toward Japanese Americans, attitudes that newspapers might have wanted to alter. It is clear that this data, while detailed, doesn’t provide all the information necessary for the narrative of Japanese Americans during WWII. It’s important to gather data from multiple sources, especially outside of the government, to get a more complete idea. Though there is a lot of information about the logistics of camp operation, we don’t yet have a full idea of American sentiment towards these relocated individuals and what the Japanese American families were really grappling with.

In order to get a more complete narrative about what life was like in the camps, it’s best to go to those who lived it. Information gathered from interviews or the like could be useful for an unbiased and honest narrative. With each family having its own unique experience, incorporating each of these into the broader narrative of the Japanese internment camps is necessary.

This week I chose to explore the finding aid for the Collection of Material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956 bulk 1942-1946. There are four boxes of relevant material stored by the UCLA Library Department of Special Collections, and it’s open for public access upon request. (I can’t wait to check out some collections one day!) Shortly after Imperial Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, the government forced the internment of Japanese Americans. Materials in this collection include publications with many different perspectives such as the War Relocation Authority, Japanese American internees, and advocacy groups. Boxes include materials like published reports, pamphlets, yearbooks, speeches, and more.

Narratives

The first two boxes are publications sponsored by the War Relocation Authority (WRA). The WRA is the US government agency that handled the internment of Japanese Americans. The materials included published reports and pamphlets that detailed general aspects of life in internment camps such as education, religion, and employment through the eyes of the government. It argued and provided justification for the internment of Japanese Americans.

The next box included materials written and produced by Japanese American internees. It included their own articles depicting life at camp, such as the conditions, the barracks, sports, school, and employment. The emphasis was placed on the Manzanar and Minidoka internment camps.

The last box was described as miscellaneous and included article clippings, publications, speeches, radio broadcasts, and more. There were various sources like the Japanese American Citizens League and the American Council on Public Affairs.

What’s missing? And how can it be remedied? 

Out of the four boxes, two were sponsored by the WRA. To me, it is very problematic if the majority of the narratives are told by the government agency responsible for the internment of Japanese Americans. How can the WRA tell the story of Japanese American internment if they were not the ones to endure it themselves? In this collection, the narrator of history is the WRA. But by including more documents that detail the life of Japanese Americans by Japanese Americans, we can reconstruct the history and present different narratives. In Caswell’s article, she expresses how history becomes silenced when omitted from archives. With more records and narratives that we document from the community itself, the gaps in history will close.

Box three included materials produced by Japanese American internees, so their narratives are presented, but they are not at the forefront of this collection. Also, the emphasis was placed on the Manzanar and Minidoka internment camps. This collection could be strengthened if narratives of Japanese American internees were included from other camps because the narratives would might differ.

In addition to more community based points of view, I would also like to see their narratives on life at camp in a greater context and scope. It would be beneficial to see materials and narratives on how they prepared themselves for camp, how they kept their morale and culture during camp, or how they rebuilt life after camp. Overall, this collection could be enhanced if more materials were drawn from the community as opposed to the government agency.

 

Introduction

The Collection of Material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956 bulk 1942-1946 contains 4 boxes and one map folder, detailing the lives of the Japanese Americans who were wrongfully interned without due process of law during WWII. The historical narrative engrained in these boxes and folder includes the life that the Japanese Americans had to endure from multiple perspectives, such as reports from the War Relocation Authority (WRA) who forcefully removed the Japanese American Citizens from their home, and yearbooks of those who endured such hardships and prejudice. The collection mostly focuses on the relocation camp of Manzanar and Minidoka.

 

The Historical Narrative

Box 1 of the collection includes reports of WRA, which details the life of the interned Japanese Americans from 1942-1945. There are 9 reports total in this box, which are chronologically ordered to understand the changes that happened during the whole internment process. From the finding aid of box 1, one can discover such information of the camp such as the reactions in and out of the camp, and the general politics inside the camp. Box 2 contains press releases by the WRA, many of them advocating the resettlement of the Japanese Americans out of the camps, as well as more in depth look at the life inside the camp, such as statistics on divorce, education, living conditions, and military services. Box 4 contains works written by Japanese American internees. Box 3 contains miscellaneous articles, speeches, theses and more about the internment of the Japanese. The historical that could be ascertained from this collection is the multiple perspective of the internment, from 1942-1946. One could get a pretty accurate detail of what was life like at the internment, in more or less chronological order. We can see what the opinions of those not only living inside the camp, but those outside as well.

The Missing Piece

One of the major problems of the collection is that both box 1 and 2, which is approx. 50% of the collection, are written by the WRA. WRA was the group that relocated the Japanese Americans, so there is inevitably some subjectivity in the reports. Box 1 which contains the report, is the only one in chronological order, so our main source of the historical narrative, with the cause and affect and datas strung together, is biased.  Furthermore, we are only given two main camps, so the data is limited, as life in other camps may not have been the same elsewhere.

The Remedy

To counteract this subjectivity, I think it is important for this collection to add another box, which has the accounts of the life inside the camp from actual Japanese Americans who endured the hardship of the camp. Then, this data should be ordered in chronological order so the researchers could get the sense of the historical narrative from the Japanese Americans Perspective, and compare it with the WRA’s take on the internment to get a more holistic view of the life in and out of the camp.

 

I decided to look at the data available for Finding Aid for the Walt Disney productions publicity Ephemera 1938-198x for this assignment. This collection begins by describing the contents of the overall collection. For instance, it introduces the establishment of Walk Disney Company in 1923 and how it has morphed into a giant film production company. This gives an overall list and brief  descriptions of different items in the archival collection including photographs, press kits, etc. It shows the progression and success of Walt Disney with each successful film or project from 1938-1980s. It is organized alphabetically by names of movies.

Some of the historical narratives that we might be able to explore based on the materials in this collection is that we could discuss the growth and progression of a successful Hollywood giant that is Walt Disney. We could discuss how the movie industry changed from having silent movies or short animated movies to lengthy, more sophisticated films like “Snow White”. The collection can also be organized in many different ways depending on what we want to show. We can organize the movies in chronological order and show the different types of changes that have accumulated over the lengthy success of Walt Disney or to show the topics being discussed in movies based on the mental state of environment or society.

 

The Collection of Material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956 bulk 1942-1946 consists of four boxes and one folder pertaining to the different narratives of those who were affected by the Japanese American internment. When the day of Pearl Harbor in 1941 happened, many Americans feared that the Japanese Americans would overthrow the government. Regardless of their citizenship, the government incarcerated many Japanese Americans during World War II. With that said, it justifies the main reason of the bulk collection around 1942-1946. Each box within the collection contains different types of documents ranging from speeches, transcribed broadcasts, to posters from those affected from the internment to portray the many different types of perspectives.

In the first series of the collection, it contains many text-heavy articles provided by the War Relocation Authority like publications and speeches. These documents support the decision to forced Japanese Americans out of their homes and into deserted, unsanitary, and prison-like institutions. From their point of view, many Japanese Americans were seen as a threat because of what the Japanese were capable of at Pearl Harbor. Assuming that they would be loyal to their own home country, the American government immediately took action and did what was right for the country, regardless of the status of the individual’s citizenship. The second series of the collection tells the narrative from the internees’ perspective through publications and newsletters. Those who had to endure the abuse and mistreatment of the camp. Given that majority of the victims were locked away essentially due to their ethnicity, these Japanese Americans were oppressed because they racialized to cause harm to society. The living conditions in the camp was beyond intolerable. It has such a negative impact on so many individuals that there are many people suffering with post traumatic stress disorder from it til this day. The last series labeled miscellaneous is compiled of different types of media, such as articles, posters, radio broadcast which serves as evidence of the repercussions of Pearl Harbor. Although these primary sources do not take a side on the internment issue like the previous two boxes, it provides a more neutral narrative to give more context of the time period.

I feel like one huge thing that this collection is missing especially is sources from those who were affected from the internment indirectly. For example, neighbors or employers who had any personal connection with Japanese Americans should talk about how the internment had any positive or negative effect on them. These sources can clarify whether or not some people felt safer that their Japanese American friends were taken away to a prison camp or if they critiqued the idea of internment. One can find articles or sources of how the overall population felt from the internment and how they reacted to such context. Their input helps expands the narratives of those who were indirectly affected and will raise more awareness about the collection and the issue.

This week I chose to explore the finding aid for George Meyer Simpsons Script Files . This aid consists of the script files, for seasons two through six, for the popular television show – The Simpsons.

According to Hayden and based on the discussions in class, we concluded that events become history only once you add narrative to these series of events. History is shaped by the author of the story and his/her personal bias plays a big role in the interpretation of the events. This aid helps us understand Meyer as a person before looking at the scripts he worked on. George Meyer was born in Pennsylvania and graduated from Harvard in 1978. He worked on multiple well known platforms such as the Harvard Lampoon, David Letterman Show, and Saturday Night Live before he moved onto the Simpsons. Through these prior platforms he built his network in the entertainment industry while gaining experience. Meyer began by writing for the show and turned into an executive producer later on.

The files include everything Meyer has worked on or assisted in from notes, outlines and drafts of episodes to designs of characters, objects and so on. The collection is arranged alphabetically by script title, which doesn’t really organize the files for a third party. I would have preferred for them to be ordered by episode numbers or air dates to create a timeline instead. Since the Simpsons is a satirical show, the timeline would help us draw comparisons from the episode topic to the current situations during that time in history, which would encourage narrative. The list doesn’t give us a lot of information about the files. Most of the files contain the episode name, the writers names, the date, and the type of document it is. I’m not completely aware about whether finding aids are supposed to provide more detail, but I would have loved to further explore each sub file to gain more insight.

If I had to write a narrative based on this aid, I would mostly be able to talk about Meyer’s biography and how his background led him to work on the Simpsons show. Additionally, I would be able to talk about the various types of pieces he worked on and the people he worked with during different times. This is not enough information for me to create an accurate narrative of the events without delving deeper into each file.