Spatial Contestation of Indo Europeesch Verbond and Japanese Internment Camp in Kesilir Plantation Village 1920s

Kesilir Village, in the southern tip of Banyuwangi, opened as a plantation area in 1920s by Indo Europeesch Verbond (Indo-European Community). Ironically, in the early period of Japanese occupation (1942-1943), the village was converted into an internment camp for Europeans in Java, including the Indo-Dutch community. Interrupted by two ruling regimes and local plantation workers in the colonial era, Kesilir has become a node of the social dynamics of people from various backgrounds. Specters of histories, memories, and the traumas of during colonial era haunted the physical and mental space of the residents, blending with the social spaces up to this day. This study investigates the village’s spatial structure and architectural intervention of two colonial regimes, extending from the opening of the IEV plantation in 1920s until when it was used for internment camp under Japanese occupation in 1943. The main objective of this study is to reconstruct the architectural history of the Kesilir Village by understanding the relationship between environment, built structure, and social dynamics that occurred in the past, through analyzing archival records, spatial structures, and memories. The study of regional morphology is used in this study to dissect maps, notes, sketches, and physical traces that can still be found. Field documentation and archive elicitation were also carried out to capture collective memories that still remain.

Dream mother: Race, gender, and intimacy in Japanese-occupied Singapore

Sheila Allan was just 17 years old when Japanese forces invaded Malaya in late 1941. British leaders surrendered at Singapore in 1942, subjecting hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians to Japanese internment for the duration of the war — including Allan. During that time, she became infatuated with the women's camp commandant, Dr Elinor Hopkins, whom she described as a ‘dream mother’. Her love and admiration blurred the lines between familial intimacy and sexual desire. Meanwhile, Allan was categorised as ‘Eurasian’ by both her Japanese captors and other European captives. She longed to be regarded as British and Australian, like her father. Nonetheless, white women condemned Eurasian women as sexually lax and immoral and questioned their right to be interned. As a result, Allan's desires for a white ‘dream mother’ reveal the fraught nature of racial, gender and sexual identities in wartime and under colonialism. These influenced not only her methods and strategies of coping during the war, but her hopes of finding love and intimacy when it was over. Her story reveals how fragile colonial categories and wartime violence fractured the destinies of colonial subjects, while love and devotion could be life-affirming.

Discourse, difference, and dehumanization: justifying the Canadian Japanese internment, 1940-1949

This thesis argues Canadian Members of Parliament used the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour as an opportunity to enforce a dominant “us versus them” narrative in order to justify the internment of approximately 22,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry. National and local newspapers reinforced this narrative through uncritical and biased reporting which negatively framed the Japanese against a more idealized and white “Canadian” identity. Critical discourse analysis was applied on several debates in the House of Commons and news articles in the Daily Colonist and the Globe and Mail between 1940 and 1949, to examine the articulation of social relations – in this case, race and ethnicity – with the goal of uncovering the power relations embedded within the discourse. The findings reveal a clear “us versus them” narrative, whereby Canadians of Japanese ancestry were constructed as “yellow,” “bad,” and “unwanted,” as opposed to white Canadians who were “good” and “loyal.”

Discourse, difference, and dehumanization: justifying the Canadian Japanese internment, 1940-1949

This thesis argues Canadian Members of Parliament used the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour as an opportunity to enforce a dominant “us versus them” narrative in order to justify the internment of approximately 22,000 Canadians of Japanese ancestry. National and local newspapers reinforced this narrative through uncritical and biased reporting which negatively framed the Japanese against a more idealized and white “Canadian” identity. Critical discourse analysis was applied on several debates in the House of Commons and news articles in the Daily Colonist and the Globe and Mail between 1940 and 1949, to examine the articulation of social relations – in this case, race and ethnicity – with the goal of uncovering the power relations embedded within the discourse. The findings reveal a clear “us versus them” narrative, whereby Canadians of Japanese ancestry were constructed as “yellow,” “bad,” and “unwanted,” as opposed to white Canadians who were “good” and “loyal.”

Marxism, Economic Theory, and Asian American Literary Studies

As migrants who were drawn to North America to serve as cheap labor, questions of money, economy, and class have been central to Asian American experiences from the mid-19th century, and Marx’s critique of capitalism has circulated almost as long among Asian Americans and anticolonial, nationalist movements in Asia. However, the long history in the communist movement of the subordination of racial and gender inequality to a narrowly defined class struggle alienated many in US racialized communities. Subsequent interventions in Marxist theory leading to non-economically determinist accounts of social transformation have resulted in a post-Marxist Asian American literary and cultural studies. This is a theory, though, that is largely devoid of specifically economic inquiry, and this has led to the marginalization of questions of class, labor, and whiteness that might complicate questions about resistance to domination and capitalist hegemony. These elisions are only exacerbated in the turn to global and transnational frames of analysis, since the complexities of local racial dynamics are often lost in more abstract narratives and conceptual paradigms. The history of Japanese internment provides a case study that exemplifies some of the difficulties of evaluating the multiple forces motivating racial discrimination.

Dorothea Lange

Purpose Dorothea Lange was one of the first US documentary photographers, and she was empowered by the belief that seeing the effects of injustice, in photographs, could elicit social and political reform. She famously documented the plight of Dust Bowl migrants during the US. Great Depression and harsh difficulties endured by incarcerated Japanese Americans during the Second World War. Lange’s photographs brought suppressed issues of class and race to the surface, depicting those impacted by national tragedies into recognizable, honorable, determined individuals. By showing Americans how suffering and injustice look in real life, she stimulated empathy and compassion. This inquiry is not particularly about the Great Depression or Japanese Internment, though disciplinary concept lessons would certainly support students’ prior knowledge. This lesson focuses students’ attention on broader ideas regarding social justice and how social and political documentary photography transform people’s views about distressing problems, even today. Supporting questions are: How can deep analysis of photographs affect our thoughts and emotions about social issues? What is empathy? How can social documentary photography affect people’s emotions? Supporting questions guide students to answer the greater compelling question, How can visuals, such as photographs, impact social change? The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This is an inquiry lesson plan based on a National Council for the Social Studies Notable Trade book for Young People award winner, Dorothea’s Eyes, written by Barb Rosenstock. Findings The paper is a lesson plan, which incorporates students’ analyses of primary sources and other research methods to engage the learner in understanding how Dorothea Lange helped change perspectives regarding the need for social and political reform. Though the story is historic, similar social justice topics still persist, worldwide, today. Originality/value Through inquiry and research, students begin to learn how social and political documentary photography began in the USA, and students create their own social documentaries. Though the US Great Depression and Japanese Internment are highly relevant within this lesson, the overall, greater message is about class, race, suffering and how to inspire empathy.

Stanley Cavell at Amherst College

In February of 2000, Stanley Cavell came to Amherst College to present two public lectures as the John C. McCloy ’16 Professor of American Institutions. (I had nominated him for the lectureship the previous year, and he had been approved by a College committee and the president of the College at the time, Tom Gerety, who was himself a legal philosopher.) It was a big deal. In the fall, the lecturer had been Ronald Dworkin. Others who had lectured through these early years of the lecture included such luminaries as Martha Nussbaum and George Kateb. (The first McCloy lecturer had been Fred Korematsu, who had unsuccessfully sued the U.S. government during World War II to end the Japanese internment program. Korematsu’s invitation had been a sort of historical reparation, since John McCloy, for whom the professorship had been named, had directed the internment camp program for FDR, famously saying, when asked about its constitutionality, “Compared to my country, the Constitution is just a piece of paper.”)