The finding aid I looked at was the “Collection of Material about Japanese American Internment, 1929-1956 bulk 1942-1946”. This collection contains material and information about Japanese American relocation, particularly after the Pearl Harbor attack during WWII. There are publications, press releases, articles, speeches, yearbooks and pamphlets, most of which can be accessed at the UCLA Library–Department of Special Collections (I find that amazing!) Many of these publications came from the War Relocation Authority and by Japanese American internees and advocacy groups. Based on the materials in this collection, you can see the narrative of Japanese Americans’ relocation and struggle after the attack, and how intensely the U.S. government sought to ensure that another attack would not happen again. Unfortunately we know these efforts led to discrimination against U.S. citizens who had a Japanese heritage.
From this finding aid, I can see there are three series: War Relocation Authority, Internment Camps, and Miscellaneous. The container list describes how many boxes there are for each series and the context/note for the items in a particular series. Each box has different folders which are organized chronologically over a span of a few months, and additionally gives the scope and content note for each item. There are statistics on the Japanese American internees, such as their marriage and divorce rates, population in a certain location, and age of those relocated. There are pamphlets persuading Japanese Americans to relocate, and even yearbooks of those who were relocated and attended a different school.
There is only one item which mentions the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And although one can assume that a major event had happened to sour the relationship between Japanese people and the U.S., we would be missing the whole story of the war, a list of every country involved, and the details of the Pearl Harbor attack if we based the narrative entirely on the records in this collection. We could remedy this lack of information by including a context near the beginning of the finding aid. They could describe the impact and effect that relocation had on not only Japanese-Americans, but the way in which the U.S. government has made efforts not to let history repeat itself. However the scope and content note for each box and folder is a great start and is a much better description than just “press releases” and “reports”. There is definitely already a lot of information and I think just having a brief introduction in the beginning would tie the finding aid together very well.
Very interesting, Hannah! Thank you for this post.
I also worked on this finding aid. However, I found your analysis interesting in the way that you take the larger context between Japan and the U.S. into account and argue how the finding aid fails to describe a narrative based on the whole picture. Very nice point!
I really enjoyed this post! I like how you thoroughly explained the finding aid and how it was structured. It was interesting hearing the Pearl Harbor point at the end. You bring up very good points about not knowing the whole narrative of the war. I agree with you, though, about how this can be a great start for all this information.