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The
publication of Yasutaro Soga's Life
Behind Barbed Wire, which had originally been released in Japanese in 1948
as Tessaku Seikatsu, is indicative of
a dramatic swell of interest in World War II-era internment over the past
several years. Brian Masaru Hayashi's Democratizing
the Enemy (2004), Stephen Fox's Fear
Itself (2005), and Alice Yang Murray's Historical
Memories of the Japanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (2008) are just three examples of recent scholarly monographs that take
internment as their primary object of study. Hardly limited to the academic sphere,
the internment research boom has been spearheaded by state and federal
politicians, whose efforts prompted then-President George W. Bush to sign off
on a bill in 2006 authorizing $38 million of federal funds to preserve the
entire internment camp system. At the same time, citizens groups in Wyoming,
Utah, and Hawai'i have seized the initiative by taking steps to protect and
even restore the remains of previously neglected camp structures. The question
that remains is what is fueling this growing awareness of wartime internment.
Clearly, a generation of Japanese Americans who came of age in the wake of the
civil rights movement has pressed the state to acknowledge and rectify the
abuses suffered by their parents and grandparents in the 1940s. To this can be
added the simple passage of time, and the growing pressure to catalog the
testimony of aging camp survivors before their time has passed. However, one
must also wonder whether the events of 9/11, coupled with two protracted wars
in the Middle East, have provoked anxiety over the prospect of internment anew
on American soil, sparking a reexamination of our nation's recent past.
Life Behind Barbed Wire effectively
complicates the dominant narrative of the Japanese American internment
experience. While the majority of academic studies on internment have focused
on Nisei, or second-generation
Japanese Americans, Soga's narrative provides his readers with fascinating
insights into the mentalities of the less numerous Issei, or first-generation Japanese immigrants, the majority of
whom were Japanese citizens during their period of internment. Furthermore, as
a Hawaiian resident, Soga's experience differed greatly from Japanese Americans
on the continent. Specifically, President Franklin Roosevelt's February 1942
Executive Order 9066, which provided the impetus for the forced relocation of
120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, had
little if any impact on the lives Japanese Hawaiians living under martial law
in the middle of a war zone. Whereas mainland Japanese received their marching
orders in the spring of 1942, Soga and other preselected Japanese nationals in
Hawai'i were greeted at their homes by armed military policemen on the very
evening of December 7, 1941, less than twelve hours after the bombing of Pearl
Harbor (25). Soga's "Pacific Ocean paradise" was thus transformed into a living
"hell" in an instant (26). In Hawai'i, practical demographic concerns precluded
the blanket internment witnessed on the mainland, as Nikkei (people of Japanese descent) constituted 37% of the total
population. On the other hand, since measures in Hawai'i almost exclusively
targeted male community leaders, for the 2,392 total Japanese Hawaiian
detainees, internment meant being ripped apart from their families for years on
end, typically separated by the vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean (10-11).
Readers
will immediately recognize that Life
Behind Barbed Wire is a far more dependable historical source than the
typical published memoirs, for a variety of reasons. First of all, the
translation and republication of Soga's original text is actually the result of
a collaborative academic undertaking. Kihei Hirai translated the original
manuscript from Japanese into English, while Dennis M. Ogawa of the University
of Hawai'i and Tetsuden Kashima of the University of Washington crafted the
foreword and introduction, which help situate the author's individual
internment experience in a broader historical framework. It is also important
to point out that Yasutaro Soga was a writer by trade. At the time of his
incarceration in 1941, the sixty-eight year-old Soga had been the managing
editor of Nippu Jiji—a local
semiweekly newspaper—for thirty-five years. The author's journalistic
expertise is self-evident throughout the narrative, and readers will be struck
by the detailed complexities with which Soga observed and recorded the events
unfolding around him. He is not without his prejudices, as evidenced by his
repeated complaints about Jews based largely on hearsay (83, 99, 136).
Nevertheless, and despite his unabashed support for imperial Japan, the author
is not loath to acknowledge the benevolence of his American captors (117).
Rather
than resorting to a discourse of victimization and resentment, Soga presents
his fellow Issei prisoners as men
intent on preserving their Japanese culture, heritage, and pride. He traces his
own five-year odyssey away from his wife and children, as he was shuttled
between three separate detention centers: from a military installation on Sand
Island in Honolulu Harbor to a War Department facility in Lordsburg, New
Mexico, and then to a Justice Department internment camp in Santa Fe. The
facilities on the mainland were far superior to those found on Sand Island,
featuring libraries, canteens, baseball fields, tennis courts, and even golf
courses. However, the camps' barbed-wire fences and watchtowers served as
omnipresent reminders of the loss of freedom, as prisoners anxiously awaited
the arrival of letters from family members, which Soga describes as the
"greatest source of happiness for an internee" (111). Displays of Japanese
cultural identity and patriotism, taking the form of sumo tournaments, noh theatrical performances, tanka poetry, and the celebration of
national holidays, allowed interned Issei to "eradicate that interminable sadness hiding somewhere in [their] hearts"
(104). Such activities, which included applause for Japanese military
victories, the singing of the Japanese national anthem, and enthusiastic banzai cheers, were generally permitted
by the camp guards, with the notable exception of an attempt (on the part of
POWs) to hoist a Japanese flag in honor of the Meiji Emperor's birthday (103).
Although
Soga emphasizes journalistic objectivity at the expense of emotional
self-discovery, his memoirs can serve as a valuable resource for educators
working at either the high school or collegiate levels. Life Behind Barbed Wire could be used to examine discrimination in
an Asian American Studies course, to discuss international law and human rights
in a Political Science or International Studies course, or to explore the
tensions of captivity in a course on internment literature. The text is
saturated with themes and concepts that call out for transnational comparisons
with other internment, POW, or concentration camp experiences. For instance,
the author reveals an assortment of differences that divided Japanese internees
into factions, not only along Issei/Nisei lines, but according to their religious beliefs, family origins, national
loyalties, date of arrival, or prior place of residence (since the New Mexico
camps housed Japanese shipped in from Latin America and Hawai'i). Teachers
might also choose to focus on the destruction of nuclear families, the sudden loss
of liberty, or the process of dehumanization, made visible through the
assignment of identification numbers, tiresome roll calls, and clothes stamped
with numbers in white paint. At the same time, readers can appreciate the
Japanese internees' struggle to maintain their human dignity and national
pride, either by contrasting themselves against German and Italian captives,
running a camp newspaper, keeping pets, or holding handicraft exhibitions for
local residents. Finally, educators can complement Soga's written testimony
with a virtual tour and a vast collection of photographs available on the
website of the Manzanar National Historic Site (http://www.nps.gov/manz/). With this
powerful combination of resources, we can help our students understand how
internees like Yasutaro Soga learned to find happiness in small things—a
full stomach, a hot shower, clean clothes, or a letter from home—and ignite
their curiosity about (and concern for) what goes on behind barbed wire and
closed doors around the world today.
Alan Rosenfeld is Assistant Professor of History at the University
of Hawai'i – West O'ahu. He can be contacted at alan.rosenfeld@hawaii.edu. |
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