Environmental Patriotism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie Y. Chiang
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Sugar Beet ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Environmental Activities ◽  
Victory Gardens

During the war, many natural resources and environmental activities were directly connected to the war effort. This chapter examines how Japanese Americans tried to show their patriotism and prove their loyalty to the United States by engaging with nature in these prescribed ways. These interactions often involved the production of food, with detainees planting victory gardens and working as sugar beet harvesters at a time when farms were experiencing severe labor shortages. In addition, Japanese Americans at Manzanar participated in a program to cultivate and process guayule, a plant that experts believed could address a nationwide rubber shortage. Participating in these activities became expressions of environmental patriotism.

“The Greatest Nation on Earth”

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah K.M. Rodriguez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Federal Government ◽  
Manifest Destiny ◽  
The United States ◽  
Northern Mexico ◽  
Texas Revolution

Between 1820 and 1827 approximately 1,800 U.S. citizens immigrated to northern Mexico as part of that country’s empresario program, in which the federal government granted foreigners land if they promised to develop and secure the region. Historians have long argued that these settlers, traditionally seen as the vanguard of Manifest Destiny, were attracted to Mexico for its cheap land and rich natural resources. Such interpretations have lent a tone of inevitability to events like the Texas Revolution. This article argues that the early members of these groups were attracted to Mexico for chiefly political reasons. At a time when the United States appeared to be turning away from its commitment to a weak federal government, Mexico was establishing itself on a constitution that insured local sovereignty and autonomy. Thus, the Texas Revolution was far from the result of two irreconcilable peoples and cultures. Moreover, the role that these settlers played in the United States’ acquisition of not just Texas, but ultimately half of Mexico’s national territory, was more paradoxical than inevitable.

Japanese Reinvention of Self through Hawai‘i’s Japanese Americans

2012 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yujin Yaguchi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese History ◽  
Postwar Japan ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
American Hegemony ◽  
Modern Japanese History ◽  
American Society

This article investigates the relationship between Asian American and modern Japanese history by analyzing the image of Japanese Americans in postwar Japan. Based on a book of photographs featuring Japanese immigrants in Hawai‘i published in 1956, it analyzes how their image was appropriated and redefined in Japan to promote as well as reinforce the nation’s political and cultural alliance with the United States. The photographs showed the successful acculturation of Japanese in Hawai‘i to the larger American society and urged the Japanese audience to see that their nation’s postwar reconstruction would come through the power and protection of the United States. Japanese Americans in Hawai‘i served as a lens through which the Japanese in Japan could imagine their position under American hegemony in the age of Cold War.

Implications of the 2012 U.S. Election for U.S. Policy in Africa’s Great Lakes Region

2013 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-191
Author(s):  
Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Natural Resources ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Democratic Republic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Great Lakes Region ◽  
Security Sector ◽  
White House ◽  
Republic Of The Congo ◽  
The U.S

Abstract:While Africans are generally satisfied that a person of African descent was reelected to the White House following a campaign in which vicious and racist attacks were made against him, the U.S. Africa policy under President Barack Obama will continue to be guided by the strategic interests of the United States, which are not necessarily compatible with the popular aspirations for democracy, peace, and prosperity in Africa. Obama’s policy in the Great Lakes region provides an excellent illustration of this point. Since Rwanda and Uganda are Washington’s allies in the “war against terror” in Darfur and Somalia, respectively, the Obama administration has done little to stop Kigali and Kampala from destabilizing the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and looting its natural resources, either directly or through proxies. Rwanda and Uganda have even been included in an international oversight mechanism that is supposed to guide governance and security sector reforms in the DRC, but whose real objective is to facilitate Western access to the enormous natural wealth of the Congo and the Great Lakes region.

Camera Men: Techno-orientalism in Two Acts

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 939-964 ◽  
Author(s):  
DANIEL MCKAY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Bubble Economy

During the years of Japan's “bubble” economy, writers and artists in the United States became increasingly susceptible to “Japan-bashing,” a discourse that objectified Japanese for their trade practices, overseas purchases, and tourist presence. In the following article, I draw upon a range of cultural texts, from Truman Capote's novellaBreakfast at Tiffany'sto Michael Crichton's novelRising Sun, in order to investigate how the trope of the camera-toting Japanese expatriate encapsulated the fears of the era. I then move to explore the ways in which Japanese Americans negotiated these tropes in their writings, paying particular attention to Ruth Ozeki's novelMy Year of Meats. I hypothesize that Japanese Americans remained aware of the phenomenon of “Japan-bashing” throughout the era, yet did not confront it in a sustained fashion. Instead, tropes were either dismissed out of hand or, as in Ozeki's case, incorporated into a narrative before undergoing a process of gradual dismantlement.

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