For this assignment, I chose to look at the finding aid for the collection of material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956. There is a diverse range of material in this collection. From semi-annual reports about internment camps sponsored by the War Relocation Authority (WRA) to camp newsletters and high school yearbooks to newspaper articles about Japanese American resettlement, these documents come from both sides: arguing for and against Japanese American internment, from a variety of viewpoints over about a 30-year period. The sheer amount of information and opinions from different sources lends itself well to creating many narratives that these documents would support.<\/p>\n
One interesting narrative would be creating a timeline about the internment camps, particularly Manzanar and Tule Lake, based on the information presented in the WRA\u2019s annual and semi-annual reports about these internment camps. Particularly, it would be interesting to use these reports to count the amount of incidents or \u201cdisturbances\u201d over time. The scope notes do not detail what is meant by \u201cdisturbance\u201d but I assume it refers to protests and riots. This information in the form of a timeline would allow historians insight into ways that the people\u00a0forced into these camps were trying to fight back and the emotional toll that the ordeal caused them. It could answer questions like, \u201cWere there more incidents in the beginning when people first arrived at these camps?\u201d \u201c Were there more towards the end as they had been in the camps for a long period of time?\u201d \u201cOr were incidents a common occurrence throughout the time people were interned?\u201d If only the information in this specific collection were to be used in the narrative, it would really be missing personal accounts. All the reports came from the WRA, obviously a source that could contain a certain degree of bias (as the WRA was supported these camps), so it would balance out if the narrative could access personal accounts of these incidents as well. This could be remedied by finding more collections of documents or perhaps conducting interviews.<\/p>\n
Another narrative to tell from these documents would be comparing perspectives on the internment camp conditions and day-to-day life. Again, there are the annual and semi-annual reports by the WRA, which would be one perspective, and there are newsletters and essays written by members of the interned community, the obvious other perspective. Comparing what was written about the camps would be interesting because historians would be able to see if there were any discrepancies between the reports, something that could lead into new research questions. The audience of the newsletters and essays was the community of the internment camp, however, it is not clear exactly who the audience of the WRA\u2019s reports was. This would need to be further researched in order to give an accurate comparison between the content of the documents. If only documents from this collection were used for this narrative, it would be missing a real objective perspective. This could be remedied by finding another collection that contains photos of the barracks and other areas to look at the conditions of the camp; a more objective source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"