Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Church Leaders ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Religious Experiences ◽  
World War ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Impact

Anne M. Blankenship's study of Christianity in the infamous camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II yields insights both far-reaching and timely. While most Japanese Americans maintained their traditional identities as Buddhists, a sizeable minority identified as Christian, and a number of church leaders sought to minister to them in the camps. Blankenship shows how church leaders were forced to assess the ethics and pragmatism of fighting against or acquiescing to what they clearly perceived, even in the midst of a national crisis, as an unjust social system. These religious activists became acutely aware of the impact of government, as well as church, policies that targeted ordinary Americans of diverse ethnicities. Going through the doors of the camp churches and delving deeply into the religious experiences of the incarcerated and the faithful who aided them, Blankenship argues that the incarceration period introduced new social and legal approaches for Christians of all stripes to challenge the constitutionality of government policies on race and civil rights. She also shows how the camp experience nourished the roots of an Asian American liberation theology that sprouted in the sixties and seventies.

The Complexity of Generational Status and Ethnic Identity of Japanese Americans

2020 ◽  
pp. 106648072097751
Author(s):  
Lorine Erika Saito
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Identity ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Intergenerational Ties ◽  
The Impact

Japanese Americans comprise multiple generations, with a first wave of immigrants entering the United States in the 1800s. The current generation of Japanese American descendants today includes over five generations. The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the ethnic identity of fourth- and fifth-generation Japanese American adults. Forty participants were interviewed as part of a larger study and deemed exempt by institutional review board. Results indicate that ethnic identity for multigenerational Japanese American adults is complex, with factors that include the impact of historical and intergenerational ties to World War II, continuance of family and cultural traditions, and identity as American but perceived as “forever foreigner.” Family counselor recommendations include considering historical background of Asian American and minority groups, rethinking educational curriculum through transformative social and emotional learning.

The Fight for Asian American Civil Rights

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah M. Griffith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
Imperial Expansion

During World War II, a group of American liberal Protestants set out to defend the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans interned without trial. The root of their wartime activism can be traced to the late nineteenth century when American imperial expansion and a surge in new immigration from Asia led to heated debates over the meaning of racial difference and the limits of American immigration inclusion. From the early 1900s through World War II, American liberal Protestants stood on the frontlines of these debates. This book explores the myriad religious, social, and political forces that shaped liberal Protestant activism over the first half of the twentieth century and the legacies their initiatives left in the post-World War II era.

Nature Behind Barbed Wire

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Connie Y. Chiang
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Us History ◽  
War Relocation Authority ◽  
The Social ◽  
Japanese Ancestry

The mass imprisonment of over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II was one of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in US history. Removed from their homes on the temperate Pacific Coast, Japanese Americans spent the war years in ten desolate camps in the nation’s interior. Although scholars and commentators acknowledge the harsh environmental conditions of these camps, they have turned their attention to the social, political, or legal dimensions of this story. Nature Behind Barbed Wire shifts the focus to the natural world and explores how it shaped the experiences of Japanese Americans and federal officials who worked for the War Relocation Authority (WRA), the civilian agency that administered the camps. The complexities of the natural world both enhanced and constrained the WRA’s power and provided Japanese Americans with opportunities to redefine the terms and conditions of their confinement. Even as the environment compounded their feelings of despair and outrage, they also learned that their willingness (or lack thereof) to transform and adapt to the natural world could help them endure and even contest their incarceration. Ultimately, this book demonstrates that the Japanese American incarceration was fundamentally an environmental story. Japanese Americans and WRA officials negotiated the terms of confinement with each other and with a dynamic natural world.

Foundations for a New World Order: Uniting Protestant Worship during the World War II Japanese American Incarceration

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-316
Author(s):  
Anne M. Blankenship
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
New World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
New World Order ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Church

During the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, visions of a peaceful new world order led mainline Protestants to manipulate the worship practices of incarcerated Japanese Americans ( Nikkei) to strengthen unity of the church and nation. Ecumenical leaders saw possibilities within the chaos of incarceration and war to improve themselves, their church, and the world through these experiments based on ideals of Protestant ecumenism and desires for racial equality and integration. This essay explores why agendas that restricted the autonomy of racial minorities were doomed to fail and how Protestants can learn from this experience to expand their definition of unity to include pluralist representations of Christianity and America as imagined by different sects and ethnic groups.

Ballad for Incarcerated Americans: Second Generation Japanese American Musicking in World War II Camps

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 284-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARTA ROBERTSON
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second Generation ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
The United States ◽  
United States Government ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
American Popular Music

AbstractDuring World War II, the United States government imprisoned approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American-born citizens, half of whom were children. Through ethnographic interviews I explore how fragile youthful memories, trauma, and the soundscape of the War Relocation Authority (WRA) Incarceration Camps shaped the artistic trajectories of three such former “enemy alien” youth: two pianists and a koto player. Counterintuitively, Japanese traditional arts flourished in the hostile environment of dislocation through the high number ofnisei(second generation) participants, who later contributed to increasing transculturalism in American music following resettlement out of camp. Synthesizing Japanese and Euro-American classical music, white American popular music, and African American jazz, manyniseiparadoxically asserted their dual cultural commitment to both traditional Japanese and home front patriotic American principles. A performance of Earl Robinson and John Latouche's patriotic cantata,Ballad for Americans(1939), by the high school choir at Manzanar Incarceration Camp demonstrates the hybridity of these Japanese American cultural practices. Marked by Popular Front ideals,Ballad for Americansallowedniseito construct identities through a complicated mixture of ethnic pride, chauvinistic white Americanism allied with Bing Crosby's recordings of theBallad, and affiliation with black racial struggle through Paul Robeson's iconicBalladperformances.

The 1942 Santa Anita Detainment Center Labor Strike and Japanese American Incarceration during World War II

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-316
Author(s):  
Stephanie Hinnershitz
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Division Of Labor ◽  
Industrial Production ◽  
Work Conditions ◽  
Worker Safety ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Labor Disputes ◽  
Labor Strike

This article studies a brief strike by Nikkei incarcerees at the Santa Anita Assembly Center in 1942. Employed in the industrial production of camouflage nets, the imprisoned Japanese Americans staged a strike over pay, worker safety, and rights. Without previous guidelines, the center’s administrators had to devise a resolution to this halt in the production of war materiel. The Santa Anita netmakers' strike and its resolution provided a foundation for handling labor disputes at the permanent WRA camps later. The author identifies the administration, division of labor, pay, and unsafe work conditions, along with the strike leadership, management’s response, and the outcome of the strike.

The Movement for Japanese American Redress

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan Asaka
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Government ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Redress Movement

The Japanese American Redress Movement refers to the various efforts of Japanese Americans from the 1940s to the 1980s to obtain restitution for their removal and confinement during World War II. This included judicial and legislative campaigns at local, state, and federal levels for recognition of government wrongdoing and compensation for losses, both material and immaterial. The push for redress originated in the late 1940s as the Cold War opened up opportunities for Japanese Americans to demand concessions from the government. During the 1960s and 1970s, Japanese Americans began to connect the struggle for redress with anti-racist and anti-imperialist movements of the time. Despite their growing political divisions, Japanese Americans came together to launch several successful campaigns that laid the groundwork for redress. During the early 1980s, the government increased its involvement in redress by forming a congressional commission to conduct an official review of the World War II incarceration. The commission’s recommendations of monetary payments and an official apology paved the way for the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 and other redress actions. Beyond its legislative and judicial victories, the redress movement also created a space for collective healing and generated new forms of activism that continue into the present.

“A Cross-Fire between Minorities”

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 667-701
Author(s):  
Jane Hong
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Asian American ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Chinese Americans ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Immigrant Rights ◽  
Caribbean Community ◽  
Black Protest ◽  
Black Immigration

This article examines the Japanese American Citizens League’s (JACL) postwar campaign to secure U.S. citizenship eligibility for first-generation Japanese (Issei) as a civil rights effort that brought Japanese Americans into contention with African American and Afro-Caribbean community leaders during the height of the U.S. Cold War in East Asia. At the same time, JACL’s disagreements with Chinese Americans and Japanese American liberals precluded any coherent Japanese or Asian American position on postwar immigration policy. The resulting 1952 McCarran-Walter Act formally ended Asians’ exclusion from U.S. immigration and naturalization, even as a colonial quota in the law severely restricted black immigration from the Caribbean and galvanized black protest. This episode of black-Japanese tension complicates scholarly understandings of the liberalization of U.S. immigration and naturalization laws toward Asian peoples as analogous with or complementary to black civil rights gains in the postwar years. In so doing, it suggests the need to think more critically and historically about the cleavages between immigration and civil rights law, and between immigrant rights and civil rights.

In Defense of Justice

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eileen H. Tamura
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In this biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawaiʻi to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara was transformed by the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese during World War II. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in “the Manzanar incident,” a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, never to return to the United States. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, this book explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.

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