tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post8934176912773976191..comments2024-01-04T04:31:00.481-05:00Comments on Mixed Race America: Japanese American Internment/Incarceration/Concentration Camps--which one is it?Jenniferhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13261371053113519712noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-34529408256184061212010-01-08T14:26:15.271-05:002010-01-08T14:26:15.271-05:00I found your post quite enlightening. I am current...I found your post quite enlightening. I am currently doing a research paper surrounding the Japanese American discrimination, and I was planning on linking it to the Anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany. If Nazi Germany wasn't so help bent on extermination, I could have seen them doing exactly what America did. So I agree using the term concentration camp, but since interment camps have been used for so long, the best way to show your stand is to state that they were interned in concentration camps. I also agree with not calling Nazi Germany's camps concentration camps but instead death camps.Dukehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03316620787952260861noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-480274573644850582008-07-26T09:06:00.000-04:002008-07-26T09:06:00.000-04:00Evan,Thanks for your two cents. I don't disagree ...Evan,<BR/>Thanks for your two cents. I don't disagree that the word "concentration camp" has become inextricably linked to the Holocaust. I think that's why many, scholars and non-scholars, are careful when using that phrase.<BR/><BR/>But I think your last point is also true--academics like to be as accurate as possible. And the setting in which this scene occurred was a seminar meeting room on a university campus, so entirely apropos to use it and have a larger discussion about it (which I think is also the point of academia--to have larger discussions about things, especially about the use of contested terms and controversial subjects).<BR/><BR/>However, I do think that because "concentration camp" has so much emotional meaning we should not forget, as Swayyde's comments remind us, that there were around 119,000 people who were put into concentration camps in the U.S. and for them, it was a concentration camp experience--not parallel to the Holocaust--and that's not what those who use the term in Japanese American incarceration scholarship mean--but it doesn't take away from the fact that it was a very painful experience with generational implications for a large swathe of Americans (who happen to be of Japanese ancestry).<BR/><BR/>Thanks for leaving a comment--look forward to future ones.Jenniferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13261371053113519712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-2158545199379894562008-07-26T04:18:00.000-04:002008-07-26T04:18:00.000-04:00I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Yes, ...I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Yes, concentration camps should mean, historically and linguistically, camps which 'merely' concentrate people. However, just like anti-semitism should linguistically mean being racist against Semites (IE Semitic peoples) it instead means anti-Jewish. Concentration camps are inextricably linked with the Holocaust.<BR/><BR/>I had a similiar debate all through my eugenics class. Some things can't get away from one defining (literally) event. Calling them concentration camps, while factually accurate is emotionally misleading.<BR/><BR/>Just my two cents.<BR/><BR/>However, that's on the broader issue. In academic settings, the goal is obviously maximum accuracy, for which concentration camps is the correct term...<BR/><BR/>So, yeah, I'm going to stop now before I confuse myself anymore.Evan Cardenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05771855865258487850noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-23718526118415839652008-04-19T08:16:00.000-04:002008-04-19T08:16:00.000-04:00My family was living in Cali at the time, had a fa...My family was living in Cali at the time, had a farm, had a life and lost everything. My great grandfather & grandparents spent four years in the concentration camps, and the only reason it wasn't longer was because the government had no proof that the farm actually belonged to family.<BR/>The loss wasn't only material, but culturally as well. We were stripped of it literally. No practice of Japanese faith/religion, no speaking of the japanese language, my aunts and uncles all have white names... Frances May, Fred, Rod...?!? good lord!! Not to say that I don't love mixture, as I am mixed, as are absolutely ALL of my cousins (we're 4th generation japanese in the states, and the 5th generation is likewise... It just strikes me as funny that all the 3rd generation (mom, aunts, uncles) ALL married and had children outside of their race.<BR/>One story always struck me; my mom wanted to learn french, so she taught it to herself by reading the dictionary, and one night my grandmother caught her. She was promptly scolded and told "traveling is only for white people". Yet, my grandmother did everything she could to raise "white" children. Sushi and Ham for christmas. The food was the only thing that survived the camps. She became a catholic and raised her family as catholics...<BR/>They were concentration camps, they didn't kill per say (and even that's debatable), but they definitely killed the God-given pride and culture of my family.<BR/>Internment camps, almost makes it sound like it was some kind of transitional thing to which the japanese people consented...which is far from the reality.<BR/>Concentrate means exactly what it means.<BR/>You don't call dogs "cats"... know what I mean?Swayydehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12906800496612270328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-62350194864221981632008-04-12T17:09:00.000-04:002008-04-12T17:09:00.000-04:00Baby221--your reasons for using "concentration cam...Baby221--your reasons for using "concentration camp" are pretty much what Professor X said--the primary goal of the govt was to CONCENTRATE Japanese Americans in one location. Interesting factoid: construction at Manazar began before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What its intended use was for can be speculated--although if you watch OLD MAN RIVER (Cynthia Fujikawa's filmed performance piece) she will intimate that the US government always had the idea of concentration camps for Japanese people given the heightened tensions with Japan in this period.<BR/><BR/>Cipher--thanks for the props--and I agree, none of these terms ever speaks to the grim and gruesome reality of these places. Camps of despair and seemingly unending torture and horror? A bit of a mouthful--and really, I forget which smart-pants philospher talked about the impossibility of poetry post-Holocaust (was it Barthes?)--because how can any language be sufficient to convey that experience?Jenniferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13261371053113519712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-415381758018293582008-04-12T15:36:00.000-04:002008-04-12T15:36:00.000-04:00Hi Jen,I love you babe!Love this post; Professor X...Hi Jen,<BR/><BR/>I love you babe!<BR/><BR/>Love this post; Professor X is a smart guy; oppression olympics causes me ennui in most cases, but his answer was spot on.<BR/><BR/>The problem is that the term "concentration camps" doesn't serve to function as an appropriate signifier for what happened in relation the Final Solution. Even "death camps" don't quite do it justice because that rather seems sterilized. <BR/><BR/>I appreciate your candor as per always.Cipherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07302124298991165004noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-34225415718307674322008-04-12T14:17:00.000-04:002008-04-12T14:17:00.000-04:00This is the kind of thing that makes me throw up m...This is the kind of thing that makes me throw up my hands and say "I hate white people" in a despairing kind of voice, which then subsequently makes it more difficult to get along with all the white people in my life who think I'm talking about them. <I>You're so vain ... I bet you think this song is about you...</I><BR/><BR/>I've always called them concentration camps, myself, because it seemed the most grammatically correct. The gov't put them there to concentrate them in one location.baby221https://www.blogger.com/profile/10728908487350684688noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-82648523669099372092008-04-12T12:37:00.000-04:002008-04-12T12:37:00.000-04:00Lesboprof,I'm with you on being surprised at how l...Lesboprof,<BR/>I'm with you on being surprised at how little people know about the Internment--and what little they do know is often inaccurate. I remember being at Manzanar at a local museum in Bishop (the nearest town next to the site--this was before the National parks service got it together to actually have a visitor's center and educational material for people). Anyway, there was this small exhibit and there were 2 white women who were clucking over how awful it was, but the one said to the other, "Well, but the same thing happened to German and Italians on the East Coast so it's not really that big a deal" (I think it was in response to a placard about the redress & reparations. I intervened, at that point and explained that while German and Italian nationals, all men, were detained, briefly, in enemy alien centers, there was no comparable mass removal of people based on ethnicity or race as had happened to the Japanese Americans. The women were quite nice and thanked me--maybe they just were taken aback at my brazenness for interrupting their conversation, but I hope, and think, they were just really fine with having facts straightened out.<BR/><BR/>And Atlasien,<BR/>Yes, I know it is quite shocking the lengths people will go to, to justify certain things. I don't know exactly what the motivation was for OAH to challenge, so vehemently, Professor X--and when another Professor, also a scholar of the Internment, intervened and offered additional information, OAH snapped at him and said, "Yes, I'm aware of that incident!"--I mean, "C'MON!" This is a COLLEAGUE of yours--you don't SNAP at him in front of other people when you are making an ASS out of yourself!!!<BR/><BR/>(sigh)<BR/><BR/>I'm actually surprisingly happy that the crazy internet denialist hasn't tried to post--have you come across him? He lurks and then pounces on blog sites that try to talk about the Japanese American internment and INSISTS that it was all a matter of MAGIC cables and justified suspicion and not racist at all--he's a Malkin supporter 100% and at Reappropriate he spammed Jenn with all these weird stats and facts and just wouldn't listen to anyone. I often wonder what his agenda is, and all I can think of is that he's a binary thinker who can't realize that the most patriotic thing you can do is to let call the U.S. on the BS that they have done in the past (and present--I mean, the parallels to post-9/11 for Muslim and Arab Americans are too ripe, yes?)<BR/><BR/>OK, off the soapbox now!Jenniferhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13261371053113519712noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-56304801087835380862008-04-11T13:16:00.000-04:002008-04-11T13:16:00.000-04:00I'm amazed at the energy that these hate-twisted p...I'm amazed at the energy that these hate-twisted people spend trying to deny historical facts. <BR/><BR/>The camps were concentration camps. "Internment" is often too pretty a word. <BR/><BR/>The Holocaust is a uniquely horrifying historical event. But concentration camps are not unique, as Professor X surely explained.<BR/><BR/>The denialist used a common deflecting tactic. "At least the U.S. government wasn't as bad as the Nazis!" Yep, they somehow managed to clear the <I>absolute lowest possible ethical bar</I>... and that's supposed to prove something? Grr....atlasienhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07242606440109684169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1658138279766595241.post-11033992761432400342008-04-11T11:53:00.000-04:002008-04-11T11:53:00.000-04:00Jen:I really enjoyed this post. I have taught hist...Jen:<BR/><BR/>I really enjoyed this post. I have taught history in my discipline for years, and I have always been shocked that so few of my students had ever actually heard of the Japanese internment. What I like about the phrase "concentration camps," is that it does arouse such emotions (especially guilt and disgust) on the part of white Americans. Internment seems like a good name for the overall process, but then I like to describe it as "the internment of Japanese Americans into American concentration camps." <BR/><BR/>As a Jew and a white person, it seems like the right term to me.Lesboprofhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09249806181782620274noreply@blogger.com