Barbed Voices

Oral History, Resistance, and the World War II Japanese American Social Disaster

Arthur A. Hansen

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781646421824, 9781607328117
• eBook ISBN: 9781607328124
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Barbed Voices is an engaging anthology of the most significant published articles written by the well-known and highly respected historian of Japanese American history Arthur Hansen, updated and annotated for contemporary context. Featuring selected inmates and camp groups who spearheaded resistance movements in the ten War Relocation Authority–administered compounds in the United States during World War II, Hansen's writing provides a basis for understanding why, when, where, and how some of the 120,000 incarcerated Japanese Americans opposed the threats to themselves, their families, their reference groups, and their racial-ethnic community.
 
What historically was benignly termed the "Japanese American Evacuation" was in fact a social disaster, which, unlike a natural disaster, is man-made. Examining the emotional implications of targeted systemic incarceration, Hansen highlights the psychological traumas that transformed Japanese American identity and culture for generations after the war. While many accounts of Japanese American incarceration rely heavily on government documents and analytic texts, Hansen's focus on first-person Nikkei testimonies gathered through powerful oral history interviews gives expression to the resistance to this social disaster.
 
Analyzing the evolving historical memory of the effects of wartime incarceration, Barbed Voices presents a new scholarly framework of enduring value. It will be of interest to students and scholars of oral history, US history, public history, and ethnic studies as well as the general public interested in the WWII experience and civil rights.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• A Note on Editing
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Oral History and the Japanese American Incarceration
• 2 The Manzanar “Riot”: An Ethnic Perspective
• 3 A Riot of Voices: Racial and Ethnic Variables in Interactive Oral History Interviewing
• 4 Taking It to the Limit: Cultural Politics and Community Control in the Gila River Relocation Center, 1942–1943
• 5 Protest-Resistance and the Heart Mountain Experience: The Revitalization of a Robust Nikkei Tradition
• 6 Political Ideology and Participant Observation: Nisei Social Scientists in the Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study, 1942–1945
• 7 Sergeant Ben Kuroki’s Perilous 1944 “Home Mission”: Contested Loyalty and Patriotism in Japanese American Detention Centers
• 8 Peculiar Odyssey: Newsman Jimmie Omura’s Removal from and Regeneration within Nikkei Society, History, and Memory
• Epilogue
• Index