Abstract
This chapter examines a series of novels authored by the Japanese-American writer Julie Otsuka who addresses the Japanese Relocation Camp experiences during World War II. Based on her family’s real internment experiences, Otsuka evocatively recalls the sad chapter her family tried to forget but never could. Using “we” as a collective narrator, Otsuka calls for a remembering and re-membering of the structure of historical silence and repression. Using Internment as a metaphor of cultural memory, Otsuka dovetails personal and family story with national history. The chapter argues that the topic of internment experiences embody the aporia and aphasia associated with forced relocation and exclusion experienced by the ethnic others. Writing the unspeakable and transgenerational trauma, Otsuka inherits the unspoken ancestral melancholia as cultural baggage.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
At an interview, Otsuka admits that she deliberately unnamed the characters in her novel, “I actually had written an earlier version of the first chapter in which the mother had…a Japanese surname, and as I continued to write about these characters I thought it seemed more effective actually to un-name them” (Howard).
- 2.
Please also refer to the [Posting of Civilian Exclusion Order/Evacuation Order No. 19, Berkeley, California, 1942] by Mine Okubo. H: 9.25 in, W: 13 in Paper ink United States, 1942–1944. (2007.62.18) Gift of Mine Okubo Estate, and The Executive Order 9066, signed by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorizing the removal of Japanese people in the United States.
- 3.
Marni Gauthier in Amnesia and Redress in Contemporary American Fiction: Counterhistory states the mishaps, “Enemies aliens were subjected to certain orders and restrictions – from the prohibition of firearms, short-wave radios, and cameras to a strict curfew. What Executive Order 9066 did was to expand the rules of ‘military necessity’ to suspect citizens, thus making it possible to subject Japanese-American citizens to the same regulations required of (mostly Japanese) ‘aliens.’ Indeed, one month after President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, Public Exclamation No. 3 extends military regulations to ‘all persons of Japanese ancestry’; evacuation for the same shortly followed, resulting in 120,000 Japanese-American interned, approximately 65 percent of them US born and thus citizens” (166).
- 4.
Beginning in 1943, Nisei, who answered “yes” to the loyalty questions and were not enlisted in the military started to leave the camps. Each was given a one-way transportation cost and $25 to start a new life elsewhere (Nagata 14).
- 5.
Literatures of early internment experience include Edward H. Spicer et al.’s Impound People: Japanese-Americans in the Relocation Centers (Tucson, 1969), Roger Daniels’ Concentration Camps USA: Japanese-Americans and World War II (New York, 1971). Artist work Citizen 13660 (1946) created by Mine Okubo; “Whitshire Bus” and “The Legend of Miss Sasagawara” written by Hisaye Yamamoto, Nisei Daughter written by Monica Sone, No No Boy written by John Okada, to name a few, are representatives of literary works representing internment experiences.
- 6.
In February 1942, two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of US residents of Japanese ancestry, more than two-thirds of whom were US citizens. Japanese Americans were not allowed to travel or carry weapons, cameras, or radios, which could be used for espionage. Approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans were permanently moved to 10 relocation centers in 7 states. In 1980, the US Congress investigated the events leading to Executive Order 9066, finding no justifiable legal or moral grounds for internment. It concluded that the relocation resulted from “racial prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership” (Stanley 87). For further background information about Japanese internment, see Stanley, Sakurai, Stewart, and Takemoto.
- 7.
In the twentieth century, a few laws restrict on Asian/Japanese immigration and citizenship. As Sakurai states, “In 1922 the US Supreme Court ruled that Asian immigrants could not become US citizens. (Their children who were born in the Unites States were automatically citizens.) In 1923 non-citizens were forbidden to own land, and in 1924, Congress halted any further Japanese immigration” (8).
- 8.
As documented in Stanley’s book I Am an American, “3700 Nisei graduates from the special school served with distinction in the Pacific War. The Nisei became one of America’s ‘secret weapons’ and their efforts helped save countless American lives, especially in the Philippines. The Nisei translated captured documents, and when American soldiers invade those islands, they knew the complete plans of the Japanese Army” (63).
- 9.
A mystery fiction, the novel is comparable to David Guterson’s 1994 novel Snow Falling on Cedars.
- 10.
On December 7, 1941, Japanese bombs hit the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by surprise, severely damaging 21 American battleships and 200 planes and killing almost 2300 persons. The following day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared war on Japan, asserting that December 7, 1941 was “a date which w[ould] live in infamy.” For further information about the bombing, see Stanley; Sakurai; Stewart; and Takemoto.
- 11.
During an interview, George Matsui, a former internee, said, “Well, the only thing when I heard about that, I said to myself, being Japanese, ‘shikata ga nai.’ Means ‘can’t help it’ because we have oriental face—can’t do anything about it. That’s the reason we all went to the relocation center. We had to do what the government told us to do. We can’t fight the government. So, we were sent to relocation center, what we call concentration center.”
- 12.
In the ninth “Thesis on the Philosophy of History,” Benjamin reviews a 1920 Paul Klee painting, suggesting that Klee is lamenting what human civilization became after World War I. The angel, caught in the maelstrom of a catastrophe, can only view the accumulating wreckage, as the storm of progress propels him forward to the bleak future.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lee, J.Ty. (2020). Japanese (Post)-Internment Narratives. In: Trauma, Precarity and War Memories in Asian American Writings. Palgrave Pivot, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6363-8_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-6363-8_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-15-6362-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-15-6363-8
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)