History break: Internment camp yearbook
Not much of a film or video angle on this, but I just had to share: My friend AngryAsianMan points out an amazing artifact from the University of California's digital historical library. It's the entire 1944-45 yearbook of Newell High School, which was at the Tule Lake internment camp for Japanese-Americans. All 80 pages have been scanned. Apparently it was a good-sized school.
What could we learn from a document like this? The questions it raises are fascinating. Apart from faculty, this was an all-Japanese-American school. How did these kids see themselves? How did they see their surroundings, which are wonderfully evoked in illustrations by a girl named Flo Oshiro? How did the experience of being only among their own kind for a few formative years shape their attitudes and lives afterward? Were some able to be class president, star baseball player, or cheerleader who wouldn't have had that chance in the public school in their hometown? What kind of culture grew up there, for that brief, exceptional time?
Of course, history tells us that these kinds of things weren't on the minds of most Japanese-Americans at the time. Internment was an extended limbo, full of annoying privations, and they just wanted to go home. But looking over this yearbook just makes me wonder. The most tantalizing page is at the end, the one titled "Autographs." There are none on the copy scanned and posted here, but I'd love to read one filled with notes and signatures. What thoughts did these young classmates share with one another in their old-fashioned penmanship -- some looking toward a summer in a small camp all together, some about to graduate with nowhere to go, some about to volunteer to fight for the country that had interned them?
I do have a couple of film recommendations here: The documentary Topaz was shot surreptitiously at the Utah camp of the same name by internee Dave Tatsuno and is well worth checking out if you have a chance. And apparently, some of Tatsuno's footage was used in the Topaz baseball drama American Pastime, which I've heard is quite good.
What could we learn from a document like this? The questions it raises are fascinating. Apart from faculty, this was an all-Japanese-American school. How did these kids see themselves? How did they see their surroundings, which are wonderfully evoked in illustrations by a girl named Flo Oshiro? How did the experience of being only among their own kind for a few formative years shape their attitudes and lives afterward? Were some able to be class president, star baseball player, or cheerleader who wouldn't have had that chance in the public school in their hometown? What kind of culture grew up there, for that brief, exceptional time?
Of course, history tells us that these kinds of things weren't on the minds of most Japanese-Americans at the time. Internment was an extended limbo, full of annoying privations, and they just wanted to go home. But looking over this yearbook just makes me wonder. The most tantalizing page is at the end, the one titled "Autographs." There are none on the copy scanned and posted here, but I'd love to read one filled with notes and signatures. What thoughts did these young classmates share with one another in their old-fashioned penmanship -- some looking toward a summer in a small camp all together, some about to graduate with nowhere to go, some about to volunteer to fight for the country that had interned them?
I do have a couple of film recommendations here: The documentary Topaz was shot surreptitiously at the Utah camp of the same name by internee Dave Tatsuno and is well worth checking out if you have a chance. And apparently, some of Tatsuno's footage was used in the Topaz baseball drama American Pastime, which I've heard is quite good.
Labels: history
posted by Steve at
7:36 PM
5 Comments:
Wow, what a great resource - and your timing could not be better, as I'm teaching internment this week in my Asian American History Class. We're reading a memoir (Farewell to Manzanar - a pretty unoriginal pick on my part, as it is one of the classics in the field), whose author was around 7-8 when her family was interred; it raises a lot of issues about the effect of the war on her family and the experiences kids have adjusting to life in limbo. Browsing this yearbook will be a great supplement.
I have to admit, I'm been waiting all term for this, because teaching Japanese internment in Nanjing means totally reversing all the local WWII-era stereotypes about the Japanese.
Wow, time to make some very fine distinctions! Fascinating. But you're not actually teaching this to Chinese students, are you?
Yup - the school is half Chinese, half "international" students, and this particular class has mostly Chinese students. Should be fun! Talking to them outside of class so far, my Chinese students seem almost too willing to accept the "military necessity" argument for internment, but I'm expecting a pretty good debate in class.
Yeah, I can kind of see why they would be ready to accept that.
I should amend my earlier note to say that in fact the distinction between Japanese and Japanese-Americans wasn't really that fine, from the Japanese-Americans' perspective. For more on the development of Nisei identity in that period, check out "Recasting Identities: American-born Chinese and Nisei in the Era of the Pacific War," by Chris Friday, in "Power and Place in the North American West," edited by Richard White and John Findlay. It's a fascinating piece.
Well, I grew up in Beijing and Nanjing and my grandfather's brother died in the war against the Japanese so I must say when I was growing up there weren't a lot of good things to say about them.
But I love Japanese culture and style and visited there this summer.
it was everything i expected and more!
history is for us to learn from not to repeat.
it was a horrible thing they did
and i wish they would just own up to it instead of white washing history
other than that i dont really have a problem with japanese people or japan it self.
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