Abstract
This chapter studies the Japanese American internment narratives published in the early twenty-first century as “neo-internment narratives.” I use the hyphenated term “neo-internment” to highlight both the continuity and disjunction of narratives that challenge the historiography of internment while revisiting and reworking the representation of internment in earlier periods. I examine the works of both well-known and new writers’ first internment novels, focusing on Julie Otsuka’s When the Emperor Was Divine, Perry Miyake’s 21st Century Manzanar, and Cynthia Kadohata’s Weedflower. The three novels revitalize internment narratives by engaging in the following aspects: (1) the impact of the emergent present, including the post-9/11 situations, on the reconstruction and rethinking of Japanese American internment; (2) the transnational perspective of internment history and interracial relationships; and (3) the postmemory of the generation born after WWII. I probe into the post-9/11 and post-redress internment memories that are reconstructed or invoked by these narratives using a critical lens attentive to the dynamics of memory at the intersection of the past and the present. In doing so, I contend that Otsuka, Miyake, and Kadohata’s neo-internment narratives illuminate cross-racial and intergenerational memories of Japanese American internment, as well as other events of mass racial violence in American history.
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Notes
- 1.
During WWII, the term “relocation centers” was used euphemistically to refer to the practice of massive Japanese American incarceration, which was then deemed a military necessity. After the war, the term “internment camps” gained popularity despite its ambiguity. Critics of the term argue that these facilities should be called, more accurately, “concentration camps” or “incarceration camps” (Daniels 2005, 205; Simal-González 2016, 166–67). While agreeing with these critics, I do not deliberately avoid using “internment” in this chapter because the term has been commonly accepted and widely used in public discourse.
- 2.
At a public hearing in New York, for example, Okubo provided her oral testimony to the CWRIC, in addition to a copy of Citizen 13660 (Okubo [1946] 2002, xi).
- 3.
In his 2003 remarks at McChord Airforce Base, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney averred that “9/11 changed everything for us” and “forced us to think in new ways about threats to the United States, about our vulnerabilities. . . .” For more details on the rhetoric, “9/11 changed everything,” advanced by the Bush administration, see Dunmire 2009.
- 4.
Kadohata published her first novel, The Floating World, in 1989, but she is best known for her children’s books. Her first young adult novel, Kira-Kira, won the Newbery Medal for children’s literature in 2005.
- 5.
The ten Japanese American internment camps of World War II are Topaz, Colorado River (Poston), Granada (Amache), Heart Mountain, Jerome, Manzanar, Minidoka, Rohwer, and Tule Lake, most of which are in desolate, isolated desert areas or swampland.
- 6.
Axelrod and Forster’s research analyzes historical analogies invoked in the media coverage of the following three events: terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India in 2008, and anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Cairo, Egypt in 2011. On the basis of importance and availability on the Web, five newspapers are selected, including the New York Times in the U.S., Ha’aretz in Israel, Dar al-Hayat in Lebanon, the Times of India in India, and People’s Daily in China.
- 7.
- 8.
In the epilogue to her memoir Desert Exile , for example, Uchida (1982) clearly states that “[m]y story is a very personal one, and I speak only for myself and of those Issei and Nisei who were in the realm of my own experience, aware that they are only a small part of a larger whole” (153).
- 9.
- 10.
During WWII, the leaders of Japanese American Citizens League championed service in the army to prove loyalty and improve the treatment of detainees. For more details, see Hosokawa 1982, 275.
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Liao, Pc. (2020). Neo-Internment Narratives: Post-9/11, Cross-racial, and Intergenerational Memories. In: Post-9/11 Historical Fiction and Alternate History Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52492-0_4
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