A Precarious Home: Japanese American Incarceration, Citizenship, and Strategies for Belonging, 1940s-1960s
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Date
2020-02-27
Authors
Wing, Olivia
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Japanese Americans on the West Coast experienced multiple losses of home before, during, and after their incarceration during World War II. Repeated and coerced migration and exclusion uprooted Japanese Americans from physical and imagined homes, characterizing their experience of belonging in the United States. Their continuing struggle to regain “home” is apparent in the continuing geographic, social, and legal displacement that many Japanese Americans experienced during the postwar period. This thesis explores the relationship between home and Japanese American identity—how identity influenced the “home” that they pursued, and how the stakes and longevity of incarceration clarified the boundaries of citizenship and belonging for them. Looking at incarceration as part of a long pattern of uprootedness allows insight to the way that repeated denial of Japanese American access to home and belonging was part of the experience of—and barriers to—conditional inclusion in the United States.
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Keywords
Asian American, citizenship, home, incarceration, Tule Lake, World War II