Required Readings:
- Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II [Read entire book]
- *Executive Order 9066
- *Korematsu vs. The United States
- *Japanese Internment Camp Oral History videos [Watch below]
- Japanese Internment Camp Photography [Note these photographs are all from the FSA/ WPA]
- Navajo Code Talker Dictionary [Warning: although this is from the Department of Defense, the Code Talkers used racial slurs in codes]
- *Civil Liberties Act of 1988 & Presidential Letter from William Jefferson Clinton
- *Pearl Harbor Radio Speeches [Watch below]
Primary Sources
Evacuation instructions for Japanese Americans relocated to Tanforan.
- Photographs of Pearl Harbor
- World War II & The American Home Front in Color
- The Fall of Imperial Japan
- Many of our historical subjects this week continually grapple with their national identity versus their racial identity, or what W.E.B. Du Bois called “Double Consciousness.” Identify one of these moments in the text that stood out or spoke to you that you might like to share with the class. What research and story telling techniques are used to convey this conflict to the reader? How are these internal and personal conflicts situated in larger historical contexts?
- In Double Victory, Ronald Takaki describes the different racialized experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans during World War II. What were some of the major similarities and differences in each group’s World War II experiences? Overall, do you see these experiences as more similar or more different? What do the stories presented in Double Victory say about the relative validity of the different conceptual frameworks for theorizing race?
- How and to what extent did military service serve as “a path to the bright future,” according to Takaki for the different groups he studies in Double Victory? How did returning veterans from World War II catalyze struggles for racial equality?
- How did the World War II experiences of people of Japanese and Chinese descent in the U.S. differ? What role did the U.S.’s foreign policy concerns play in explaining these divergent experiences?
- Although there is no official blog post this week, if you have time, look into two major California Supreme Court decisions from the late 1940s that would have large-scale national legacies: 1) Perez v. Sharp and 2) Mendez v. Westminster
Multimedia [Note some of these oral histories use the same opening frame sequence in their playlist, but when you click on them individually they are different].
Impact of the Alien Land Laws in California – Eiichi Edward Sakauye Oral History
Cherry Kinoshita – Oral History
Oral History – Fumiko Hayashida
Oral History – Tsuguo “Ike” Ikeda
Oral History – Kara Kondo
President Roosevelt Declares War
Rosie the Riveter Homefront Oral History Project
George Takei on his life in a Japanese Internment Camp
BBC History of World War II Hiroshima [Higher quality available on Netflix]
Pat Morita on Gila & Tule Lake Internment Camps
Want to learn more? Check out the following:
- Who was Rosie the Riveter? [Includes Oral History Videos]
- Eduardo Obregon Pagan, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. (2003)
- Brian Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment (2008)
- To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu (childhood excerpts on Japanese Internment camp experiences)
- May Sky: There is Always Tomorrow: An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku (Sun & Moon Classics)