Narratives of the Japanese Internment

For this week’s blog post I chose to look at the finding aid for the Activities and entertainment at Heart Mountain Relocation Center Photographs, 1942-1943. I was particularly drawn to this collection, because I am currently taking an Asian American studies course which covers the Japanese internment. The finding aid shows that the collection consists of photos of Japanese traditional theatre, wrestling, farming dancing, playing games, as well as photos of the relocation center and the surrounding nature. Based on these photographs, we would be able to tell a tale of cultural survival. These photos are direct proof of the stability and longevity of these cultural practices and customs despite the Japanese internment. At the same time, the photos of the relocation center itself and the surrounding areas offer damning evidence of the civil rights abuses enacted against Japanese-Americans by the United States government during the time. However, while the photos provide a first-hand view of Japanese life under internment, they fail to capture the humanistic tales behind these photos. In this case, interviews or journals would serve as useful sources to shed light on the more human, more emotional aspects of day to day life. Other sources could include the daily itineraries or routines of the prisoners, to better understand their treatment at the hands of the United States government. Newspaper clippings and articles would also allow readers to understand the context of the Japanese internment against the larger background of World War Two. These clippings, along with the interviews, journals, and photographs, would allow us to better understand how the Japanese endured under their conditions of imprisonment and the strategies they employed to ensure the survival of their culture. Other information that would be helpful would be demographic information, whether from camp records or census records. These records would show us how many of the Japanese Americans were second or third generation Americans by the time the war had broken out. Furthermore, census data would allow users to see which age demographics were most heavily affected by the internment period. Along with the interviews, this census info would allow us to see how each age demographic dealt with the internment period in their own ways ranging from children to teenagers to parents and grandparents. By including these various types of sources, we would be able to tell a narrative that would be both factual, yet meaningful from an emotional point of view.