Karen M. Inouye

The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration reexamines the history of imprisonment of U.S. and Canadian citizens of Japanese descent during World War II. Karen M. Inouye explores how historical events can linger in individual and collective memory and then crystallize in powerful moments of political engagement. Drawing on interviews and untapped archival materials-regarding politicians Norman Mineta and Warren Furutani, sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani, and Canadian activists Art Miki and Mary Kitagawa, among others-Inouye considers the experiences of former wartime prisoners and their on-going involvement in large-scale educational and legislative efforts.

While many consider wartime imprisonment an isolated historical moment, Inouye shows how imprisonment and the suspension of rights have continued to impact political discourse and public policies in both the United States and Canada long after their supposed political and legal reversal. In particular, she attends to how activist groups can use the persistence of memory to engage empathetically with people across often profound cultural and political divides. This book addresses the mechanisms by which injustice can transform both its victims and its perpetrators, detailing the dangers of suspending rights during times of crisis as well as the opportunities for more empathetic agency.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 256
• Erscheinungstermin: 13. März 2018
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781503600560
• Artikelnr.: 48419055

Autorenporträt

Karen M. Inouye is Assistant Professor of American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Unearthing the Past in the Present
chapter abstract
Building on Avery F. Gordon's notion of "haunting," the introduction
discusses the moments in which lingering memories of injustice advance to
the forefront of consciousness. It attends in particular to the frequently
halting manner in which the vagaries of individual suffering can eventually
give rise to collective action. Empathy is particularly important for such
action, insofar as it allows individuals to identify with one another and,
thereby, recognize common ground on which to act. To revivify the myriad
insults and tragedies visited upon Nikkei in Canada and the United States
thus serves to galvanize not only people of Japanese ancestry but also
others of conscience who see in this shameful historical moment emotionally
as well as intellectually compelling cause for exercising political agency.
For that reason, this portion of the book refers to such agency as
transmissible, even "contagious."
1Knowledge Production as Recasting Experience
chapter abstract
Chapter One examines the life and work of former inmate and sociologist
Tamotsu Shibutani, and how the afterlife of a historical event can develop
from a generalized sense of injustice and its costs into a clear topic for
scholarly study and political engagement. Though Shibutani had been
interested in race relations and social disincorporation long before
Executive Order 9066, and had worked for the Japanese American Evacuation
and Resettlement Study where he gathered ample data for his graduate theses
at the University of Chicago, nearly three decades would pass after his
release from camp before he began publishing on the complexities of
interpersonal experience and social disincorporation. This chapter treats
that interval, as well as the work that came after it, as a study in the
trajectory of afterlife from lingering memories to explicit analysis, and
from personal experience to broad political engagement.
2Personal Disclosure as a Catalyst for Empathetic Agency
chapter abstract
Chapter Two examines the growing willingness of Japanese Americans to
engage in personal disclosure regarding wartime incarceration. Taking
former U.S. Representative Norman Mineta as a case study, it demonstrates
that Nikkei did not undertake such disclosures lightly, but rather
recognized the importance of first-person singular modes of address for
creating legislative coalitions. With respect to Mineta, that willingness
to disclose the particulars of incarceration built on an empathetic
engagement with economic and social justice that had informed his career
from early on. During the pursuit of redress in the United States, however,
what had been an implicit engagement with the past became explicit, so much
so that it came eventually to inform Mineta's decisions concerning
post-9/11 policy. In this respect, the pursuit of empathetic agency not
only changed Mineta; it also changed him, rendering that agency both
transmissible and reciprocal.
3Canadian Redress as Ambivalent Transnationality
chapter abstract
Shifting the geographical and cultural scope of the book, Chapter Three
looks at Canadian discourses of redress in the year following the
publication of Personal Justice Denied (1983). The product of a formal
government inquiry, this publication galvanized Nikkei in Canada, who
subsequently set about debating how best to pursue redress in that country.
Recognizing profound cultural and political differences between their
situation and that of Japanese Americans, they engaged in a discourse that
shows how Nikkei identity in North America in the 1980s was contested,
fragmentary, and at times contradictory, rather than discrete and easy to
identify. Rather than produce some kind of artificially unified self-image,
Japanese Canadians in pursuit of redress engaged in an ambivalent
transnationality that referred to American (and Japanese) precedents even
as all of the parties involved recognized the significant differences that
attended each main type of Nikkei experience.
4Hakomite and the Cultivation of Empathy as Activism
chapter abstract
Chapter Four examines the intergenerational dynamics of afterlife, with
particular attention to how third- and fourth-generation Nikkei in
California have worked to perpetuate key aspects of Nikkei wartime
experience. Two case studies form the heart of this chapter: the founding
of formal pilgrimages to Manzanar, and the establishment of Fred Korematsu
as a key figure in the narrative of incarceration and those who have fought
it. In each of these cases, embodiment is crucial for the cultivation of
empathetic identification and, thus, agency. Locating historical events
with respect to specific sites and individuals, younger generations
establish a form of continuing first-person address that demands both
identification (as in the case of Korematsu) and imaginative reconstruction
(in the case of Manzanar, which remains only in fragments of its original
state).
5Retroactive Diplomas and the Value of Education
chapter abstract
Chapter Five examines the value of a college degree, taking as its focus
the recipients of retroactive diplomas awarded to Nikkei who were wrongly
forced from high schools and institutions of higher education after the
bombing of Pearl Harbor. Well into their 80s and 90s, these individuals
stand to gain nothing material or economic from such action, and yet they
have pursued it vigorously. No less important, so have a number of
activists, most notably Mary Kitagawa, who helped persuade the University
of British Columbia to award degrees to students it had expelled in 1942.
The value of education, this chapter argues, lies less in its economic or
even intellectual promise than in its political and social potential,
particularly when thought of in terms of embodiment.
Epilogue
chapter abstract
The epilogue illustrates the main conceptual strands of the book in a pair
of narratives.