Catching Up

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel O. Regalado
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Baseball Players ◽  
Black Player ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Major League ◽  
Dramatic Shift ◽  
Mainstream Society ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines the scope of Nikkei baseball in the aftermath of the Second World War. Re-entry into mainstream society proved challenging for much of the Nikkei community, particularly as anti-Japanese sentiments were still smoldering in the wake of the conflict. For a time Nikkei baseball came to a virtual halt as the Japanese American community attempted to rebuild their lives. Yet both the sport and the Nikkei community would undergo a dramatic shift as the postwar years wore on, such as Jackie Robinson's entry into the Major League as its first black player. Nikkei baseball would soon thrive again, and with its revival came several prominent Nikkei baseball players who would finally build that longed-for bridge between the Japanese American community and the rest of the nation.

scholarly journals Reassessing Japanese American Collective Memory Through Gene Oishi’s Internment Narratives

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolangelo Becce
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Model Minority ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
True Self ◽  
Direct Response ◽  
Model Minority Stereotype ◽  
Second World

Seven decades after Japanese Americans were interned during the Second World War, former journalist and internment survivor Gene Oishi published Fox Drum Bebop (2014). The protagonist, Hiroshi, had been introduced in Oishi’s previous memoir, In Search of Hiroshi (1988), as “quasi-fictional” and “neither American nor Japanese, but simply me”. Yet, in the same memoir, Oishi had also described his inability to write about ‘Hiroshi’, thus settling on ‘Gene’ as a main character and waiting 28 more years before publishing a book about his true self. A comparison between the two books highlights that In Search of Hiroshi was written as an attempt at telling a story that would implicitly support the ‘model minority’ myth by offering an account of the internment experience as a direct response to the sociopolitical constraints related to the request by Japanese Americans for redress from the U.S. government. On the other hand, the more recent Fox Drum Bebop represents a fictional retelling of Oishi’s memoir which reveals the limits of the collective memory of the internment as developed during the redress years by openly defying the ‘model minority’ stereotype while at the same time once more denouncing the injustices suffered by the Japanese American community during the war. This essay focuses on Oishi’s double narrative as a reassessment of the collective memory of the internment experience and of its lasting effects on Japanese Americans.

Landscapes of beauty and plunder: Japanese American flower growers and an elite public garden in Los Angeles

2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 699-717
Author(s):  
Wendy Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Defining Moment ◽  
Multiple Generations ◽  
Nursery Stock ◽  
Public Garden ◽  
Second World ◽  
The U.S

In 1942, Los Angeles newspaper publisher Elias Manchester Boddy purchased the nursery stock of at least three Japanese-owned nurseries. Two grower families, the Yoshimuras and the Uyematsus, were forced to sell their life’s work prior to their indefinite incarceration by the U.S. government during the Second World War. These plants, including rare and unique breeds of camellias, became the basis of what is now Descanso Gardens, a celebrated public garden. In this article, I examine Boddy’s transactions as an instance of racial plunder: a morally and affectively inflected act of theft structured by racism that is as much about the act’s preconditions and afterlives as it is about the act itself. Using archival research, oral histories, and interviews with family members, I foreground the experiences and perspectives of the Japanese American families across multiple generations and landscapes, rather than a single perspective and defining moment. In doing so, a story emerges involving alternative worldviews forged through and superseding racism and dispossession as well as heterogenous relationships to land not dictated by capitalist logics. In detailing the specifics of the transactions, this work also challenges the silences and misrepresentations that exculpate those who benefited from Internment.

scholarly journals The Japanese American Experience Through Literature: Joy Kogawa’s Obasan and Mitsuye Yamada’s Poetry

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Isabel Seguro Gómez
Keyword(s):  
White Supremacy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Joy Kogawa ◽  
World War ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Second World

La comunidad japonesa-americana se ha visto marcada por la experiencia del internamiento en campos de concentración a consecuencia de la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Este hecho histórico demostró que a pesar del carácter multicultural de las sociedades estadounidense y canadiense lo que prevalecía era la noción de la supremacía blanca. Joy Kogawa y Mitsuye Yamada fueron de las primeras voces que rompieron con el silencio de canadienses y estadounidenses de origen japonés. Ambas exploran cómo las políticas racistas de sus respectivos países han afectado no sólo sus vidas, sino también las de sus antepasados y la de las generaciones más jóvenes.Abstract:The Japanese American community has been deeply marked by the internment experience as a result of the Second World War. This historical event demonstrated the fact that, despite the multicultural nature of U.S. and Canadian societies, notions of white supremacy were the ones that prevailed. Joy Kogawa and Mitsuye Yamada were two of the first voices that emerged breaking the silence of Canadian and American citizens of Japanese origin. They explore the ways in which the racist policies of their respective countries had affected not only their own lives, but also that of their ancestors and of the younger generations.

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