Racial Subalternity of the Issei in Select Japanese North American
Fiction
Ambika Vishnu Kamat and André Rafael Fernandes
Ambika Vishnu Kamat is a Doctoral Research Scholar at Department of
English, Goa University, Taleigao Plateau, Goa, India.
Dr. André Rafael Fernandes is a Professor in the Department of English,
Goa University, Taleigao Plateau, Goa, India.
Abstract
After
Imperial Japan attacked the Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, the resultant
internment of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians, as per former US
President Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 90661 and former
Canadian Prime Minister King’s cabinet-approved Order-in-Council P.C. 14862
respectively, can be seen as the culmination of racial discrimination and
prejudice in North America against Japanese North Americans. The war hysteria
aggravated the negative sentiments and prompted the respective governments to
translate long held racial bias into harsh wartime measures (Robinson n.p.). This paper examines two
literary works based on the internment to understand the dynamics of racial
domination and subordination in this context. It aims at analyzing the Issei,
in particular, and the community, in general, as the racial subalterns in the
social hierarchy during the internment. The texts selected for analysis are Joy
Kogawa’s Obasan, first published in 1981, and Julie Otsuka’s When
the Emperor was Divine (2002). The cultural values inherent to the
upbringing of the Issei make it possible for them to sustain through the
prevalent status quo. The Issei held on to their core Japanese values and
cultural codes such as restraint, family obligations, reticence or protective
silence, conflict-avoidance, endurance and resignation even during a
catastrophic disruption like the internment. The restrained response of the
Issei and their withdrawal into protective silence make them racial subalterns
of the society depicted in the respective texts.
Keywords: Racial Subaltern, Internment, Japanese North
Americans, Issei, Second World War.
Introduction
The
foreword of Selected Subaltern Studies (1988) edited by
Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak highlights that the term “subaltern”
has political as well as intellectual connotations. The opposite of it are the
groups in power which are called “the dominant” or “the elite” or “the
hegemonic class”. The term “subaltern” was coined by Antonio Gramsci who
perceived history as a socio-cultural interplay between the hegemonic class and
the subaltern, in his words, the emergent class which refers to the mass of
people kept under control by repressive and/or ideological apparatuses (vi).
Subaltern studies deals with the roles “agency, subject positions and hegemony…
[play in] the ontological resistance of all varieties of historical
determinism, techno-economic or cultural” (Chaturvedi xiii).
Gyanendra
Pandey, in his essay “The Subaltern as Subaltern Citizen” published in 2006,
extends the understanding of the term ‘subaltern’ based on two parameters. The
term ‘subaltern’ for decades, has been used with reference to the peasants and
the working class, inhabiting colonial and postcolonial spaces, in areas such
as subaltern studies and deconstructive historiography (Landry and MacLean n.p.). Pandey underscores that subaltern is a
relative position based on “dominance and subordination …produced… and altered
historically” (4738). He also argues that
difference and subalternity are intertwined as “it is in the attribution of
difference that the logic of dominance and subordination has always found
expression” (4740). Racial difference is
at the root cause of the prejudice and discrimination the Japanese immigrants
to North America and their descendants faced during the Second World War. This
paper aims at examining the Issei3, that
is, the first generation of Japanese immigrants to the continent of North
America in select Japanese North American texts as the racial subalterns in the
social hierarchy during the period of internment that followed the bombing of
Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The texts selected for analysis are Joy
Kogawa’s Obasan, first published in 1981, and Julie Otsuka’s When
the Emperor was Divine (2002).
Issei and their
Immigration to North America
The
Issei immigrated to the
U.S. “between 1890 to 1915, before the immigration Act of 1924 that banned any
further immigration” (Houston and Houston xv). Fugita and Fernandez note that the American
Issei initially took up labour intensive jobs and gradually moved on to
entrepreneurial undertakings after overcoming legal hurdles such as the Alien
Land Law which did not allow Japanese immigrants, who could not be naturalised
citizens and thus termed “aliens”, to own land (8, 17-18). Issei men and their
Nisei children had wider generation gap as the Issei men used to be ten to
fifteen years older than their wives. Language became a barrier to the Issei as
they primarily relied on Japanese as a language of communication. This had
personal and social repercussions for them.
After
Imperial Japan attacked the Pearl Harbour on 7 December, 1941, the internment
of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians, as per former US President
Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066, signed on 19 February 1942, and former
Canadian Prime Minister King’s cabinet-approved Order-in-Council P.C. 1486,
passed on 24 February 1942, respectively, can be seen as the culmination of
racial discrimination and prejudice in North America against Japanese North
Americans. In addition to that, there was war hysteria that aggravated the
negative sentiments and prompted the respective governments to translate long
held racial bias4 into harsh wartime measures (Robinson n.p.). Such wartime measures
signified the institutionalization of discrimination and prejudice on racial
grounds. Thus, in this analysis, the Japanese North Americans are seen as
racial subalterns during the years of internment.
Around
110,000 to 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry were living on the Pacific
coast of the U.S. before the internment. Almost two-thirds of them were Nisei,
the second generation. In spite of being American citizens, they were
incarcerated into interior camps (Fugita and
Fernandez 3; Uchida vii). The summary of Personal justice denied:
Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians highlights
the fate of the Issei during internment “The same prohibition applied to the
generation of Japanese immigrants who, pursuant to federal law and despite long
residence in the United States, were not permitted to become American citizens…
American citizens and their alien parents were removed by the Army” (Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of
Civilians 2).
In
Canada, the first Issei arrived in British Columbia in 1877. By 1914, around
10,000 Japanese, primarily men, were living in Canada (Archived History Beginning). The first wave of immigration
continued till 1928. Unlike in the U.S., “about 3,650 Japanese were nationalized in
Canada before 1923, after which Canadian nationality was very difficult for
them to obtain. By 1941, the Issei had spent an average of 30 years working in
Canada” primarily in areas such as agriculture and fishing (The Issei). Over 20,000 to 22,000 Japanese Canadians
were interned during the Second World War
(Sunahara, Japanese Canadians; Robinson; Canada's Japanese Community). Sixty
five percent of them were born in Canada (Robinson
n.p.). Having looked at the immigration of the Issei to North America,
it would be useful to understand how they become racial subalterns given the national
policies, the legislative measures and discrimination on economic as well as
socio-cultural grounds due to their race.
Issei as Racial
Subaltern
In
the introduction to Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial
(2000) Vinayak Chaturvedi remarks that “the emergence of identity politics and
multi-culturalism” made Subaltern Studies a significant critical field in late
1980s in the U.S. (xii). This was a subsequent development after the Civil
Rights, Feminist and African American movements of the 1960s and 1970s which
brought to the foreground “the inclusion of African Americans, Latino/a
Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and American women in the culture
of critical discourse…[and] focused principally on the exclusions, silences,
and blindnesses of male WASP cultural homogeneity” (West 260). Around this
time, Subaltern Studies moved to investigate culture as an entity with the help
of “textual and discourse analysis, and away from the economic base as the
central zone of power and contestation” (Chaturvedi xii).
A
poignant rhetorical question raised in Jean-Paul Sartre’s preface to Frantz
Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth (1963) “And that super-European
monstrosity, North America? Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fraternity,
love, honor, patriotism, and what have you. All this did not prevent us from
making anti-racial speeches” (26) is a powerful statement against the racist
mindset prevalent in the Western world. Though the preface introduces Fanon’s
grave and fierce deliberations about the colonizers and the natives in the
French colony of Algeria, this statement about racial discrimination, prejudice
and the white hypocrisy is quite relevant to the racially subaltern community
of Issei. Throughout the course of history of Japanese in North America we see racial
difference to have played a crucial role in the discriminatory legislations
passed by the U.S. and Canada, and within the popular perceptions, dominated by
fear and anxiety, about the Japanese community.
Ann
Gomer Sunahara’s The Politics of Racism : The Uprooting of Japanese
Canadians during the Second World War (2000) and Gary Okihiro’s The
Columbia Guide to Asian American History (2001) provide a comprehensive
historical overview of the legislative measures enacted by Canada and the U.S.
particularly targeting the Japanese immigrants and their descendants in North
America. They also shed light on the struggles faced by the community on the
socio-cultural and economic fronts as a result of the racist policies of the
nations. Sunahara notes that in November 1941, ninety percent
of the total population of Japanese in Canada (23,450 at that time) was
concentrated in British Columbia. Sunahara points out how Thomas Shoyama,
editor of the English edition of the New Canadian, a Nisei newspaper
emphasized on the election campaigns of politicians of British Columbia that “appealed
to the fear of economic competition, fear of social disruption and
intermarriage, and fear for personal and national security” (The Politics of
Racism 5-7). This essentially indicates how the mutual insecurities of the
public and the politicians influenced each other to shape an Anti-Japanese
rhetoric.
On the economic front, racist targeting of the
Japanese Canadians occurred on two levels. They were considered inferior on
racial grounds and hence not eligible for equal pay. However, they were accused
of undermining the white interests by working for lower wages. At the same
time, they were condemned for superior productivity and longer working hours.
Their dedication was seen as a part of larger economic conspiracy. The
discrimination on the economic front was supported by socio-cultural claims
such as people of Japanese origins are ethnically and genetically incompatible
with the Canadian society as they were incapable of assimilation. The social,
religious, economic and educational institutions of the Japanese were regarded
as evidences of unassimilability (Sunahara, The Politics of Racism 7). Fugita and Fernandez observe that Japanese Americans,
like their Canadian counterparts, were restricted to being wage labourers in
industries and farms as well as to small restaurants, hotels and stores in the
cities. They “were forced into these small business niches
because of the discrimination they faced in other occupational areas”. Communal
solidarity became crucial for economic survival (9).
Through their rhetoric, the British Columbian racists
constructed an image of Japanese Canadians as spies of Imperial Japan. The fact
that Nisei had dual citizenship of Japan and Canada, the tendency of Issei to
send their children to Japan for a part of their education and also the use of
Japanese government educational material in educational institutions of the
community were cited as proofs of their claims. More than half of the Japanese
Canadians of British Columbia resided in cities, whereas the others were
scattered throughout the Fraser Valley and pursued farming, fishing, lumbering
and mining. This was perceived by the racists as a strategic edge for the
Japanese in destroying state machinery and military assets in the face of war.
For Japanese Canadians it was a vicious cycle given that the economic
institutions of and opportunities available to the white people were largely
closed to them, for instance, extremely limited fishing licences and
memberships to trade unions. With such a scenario, the members of the community
had to rely on community institutions to earn their livelihood, moreover, in
order to be a part of the community, the knowledge of Japanese and attending
Japanese schools were essential. Canadian Japanese Association, primarily a
conservative Issei organization, and Japanese Canadian Citizens’ League, the
most active of the many Nisei organisations, were among the notable community
institutions. However, “ideological, cultural and generational divisions”
rendered the community leaderless during the impending crisis of internment (Sunahara,
The Politics of Racism 8-10).
The Gentlemen’s Agreement limited immigration of Japanese
to 400 per year and an eventual revision in 1928 brought the limit down to 150
per year. Canada excluded Nisei from drafting them into military during the
Second World War effective from 1939 in fear of their claims to voting rights
in the future. Asians were denied voting rights as per a provincial law of
1902. From March 1941 it was mandatory for every Japanese Canadian to register
with the government. The efforts of officials, who supported the cause of
Japanese Canadians, such as Dr. Hugh L. Keenleyside of the Department of
External Affairs, Asst. Comnr. Frederick John Mead in the RCMP, Major General
H.G.D. Crerar, Maj. Gen. Ken Stuart and Lieutenant General Maurice A. Pope in
the military proved to be in vain given the prevalent political climate.
In January 1943, the Government enabled the Custodian
of Enemy Property to sell the properties of Japanese Canadians. This was
justified as a measure to finance the internment, in fact it was primarily to
permanently discourage the Japanese Canadians from returning to the West Coast.
In August 1945, around 4,000 people of Japanese origin were deported to Japan
for refusing to move to the eastern part of the country after internment (Sunahara,
Japanese Canadians). Like their Canadian counterparts, in the U.S., Okihiro
notes around
half of the Japanese American population lived in concentrated settlements. “Their
race, Old World culture, economic competition, segregated communities, and
uncertain allegiance to the United States” (104) had generated fear and anxiety
among the whites.
A
historical overview brings to fore the fact that Anti-Japanese sentiments had
started taking roots in 1906 itself with San Francisco ordering the segregation
of Asian students, followed by the Alien Land Law passed in 1913 which did not
allow Issei to own land. The Western states dictated national policy which
culminated into the Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907 and Oriental Exclusion Act of
1924. A scenario similar to Canadian British Columbia
emerged in the American region of San Francisco where political interest groups
such as Oriental
Exclusion League in 1908 which was succeeded by The California Joint
Immigration Committee in 1924 used the economic insecurities of white
labourers and landowners to advocate removal of Japanese from the West Coast
(Okihiro 104-105).
With
the beginning of the Second World War, organizations such as the Western
Growers Protective Association and the American Legion and Native Sons of the
Golden West along with labor unions fuelled the Anti-Japanese sentiments
through mass media particularly the print media. Congressman Leland Ford of Los
Angeles emphasized on the presence of Japanese Americans along the coast as a
security threat to California. Though opinions of others such as Congressman
John Costello of Los Angeles and some officials from the Justice Department and
the Army were about the aforesaid issue, the Executive Order 9066 signed by
President Franklin Roosevelt, which provided for the internment of the Japanese
American community, proved to be the final nail in the coffin. It imposed
criminal penalties for opposing the order, and the Supreme Court, in test cases
brought up by Japanese Americans, affirmed that the evacuation was
constitutional…. some military officers, including [Lieutenant General John]
DeWitt, shared the public’s racist attitude toward the Japanese. The Justice
Department’s abdication of responsibility to the War Department allowed the
Army’s plan to go forward (Okihiro 106-108). After taking an overview of various
political policies, economic insecurities and socio-cultural perceptions that
have contributed to racial discrimination against the Issei in the U.S. and
Canada, the next sections would locate the impact of such discrimination on the
community as expressed through the select works of fiction.
Issei in Kogawa’s Obaasan
Among
the Issei victims of internment were Grandma and Grandpa Nakane, the Issei
grandparents of the protagonist Naomi Nakane in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.
They were residents of New Westminister. While they were on their annual visit
to Saltspring Island, where they had a shop before, in spite of not being
residents of the place, they were sent to Sick Bay. Naomi notes Sick Bay,
particularly, the Pool was
a prison at the exhibition grounds called
Hastings Park in Vancouver. Men, women and children outside Vancouver, from the
“protected area” – a hundred mile strip along the coast – were herded into the
grounds and kept there like animals until they were shipped off to roadwork
camps and concentration camps to the interior of the province. (Kogawa 93)
Grandpa Nakane
arrived in Canada in 1893, wearing a “Western suit… and platformed geta on his
feet. When he left his familiar island, he became a stranger, sailing toward an
island of strangers” (21). As a skilled
boat builder he established a shop on Saltspring Island. Grandpa Nakane brought
his cousin’s widowed wife and her son, Isamu, and married her. Isamu, thus,
became older half-brother of Naomi’s father, Mark Nakane (refer fig.1. and fig.
2.).
Fig.1. Genealogy of Nakane family
Fig.2. Genealogy of Kato family
Technically, Isamu
was an Issei as he was born in Japan in 1889. Isamu’s wife Ayako or Obasan was
also an Issei who came to Canada and worked as a music teacher. She became a
good friend of Grandma Nakane who was “an accomplished koto player and singer” (22) and eventually was married to Isamu.
Emily
Kato, Naomi’s maternal aunt and a Nisei activist, while trying to find a way
out with Mark Nakane, her brother-in-law, in the face of such grave violation
of fundamental rights by the government, insists on registering their protest
by meeting the officials of Security Commission5 responsible for
such ruthless measures.She plans to explain them the fact that the Nakanes are
not the residents of Saltspring Island. They should not be imprisoned in Sick
Bay as other elderly inhabitants of Vancouver and New Westminster have not been
interned. Aunt Emily has a better idea of the conditions in the camps as her
close friends Fumi and Eiko are present there. Aunt Emily has not lost faith in
the democratic machinery of the country and hopes that producing facts before
the officials would make them rethink their policies. However, Mark is
skeptical when he points out that the officials may not be keen in listening to
their story in the face of impending war and national crisis.
Naomi,
a Sansei, can comprehend the plight of the Issei during the war “ “Too old”…I
can imagine that my grandmother said much the same thing those dark days in
1942, as she rocked in her stall at the Vancouver Hastings Park prison6.
Grandma Nakane, Uncle’s mother, was too old then to understand political
expediency, race riots, the yellow peril” (20).
Internment and
Protective Silence of the Issei in Obasan
In
Kogawa’s Obasan, at various points in the narrative, Naomi recollects
the male family members and acquaintances being interned. She has heard
fleeting references to the same from Ayako and Emily. While taking a look at a
photograph of Isamu and Mark standing in front of a boat designed by the
latter, Naomi notes “Uncle [Isamu] too was taken away… He had no provisions,
nor did he have any idea where the gunboats were herding and the other Japanese
fishermen in the impounding fishing fleet” (26).
Naomi
is quick to highlight that the adults were resolved not to reveal details of
the terrible period of internment to the next generation. In Naomi’s case the
occasional discussions were limited to her parents, Emily, Isamu and Ayako. For
the Sansei like her, the memories of internment are “drowned in a whirlpool of
protective silence. Everywhere I could hear the adults whispering “Kodomo no
tame. For the sake of the children… Calmness was maintained“ (26).
A
major instance of protective silence seen in Kogawa’s Obasan is the
secrecy maintained around Naomi’s mother’s disappearance. It is only when
Nakayama Sensei, a local minister, reads from the letter exchanged by the
Katos, Naomi’s maternal grandparents, that the protective silence maintained
for the sake of the children is breached. According to Nakayama-sensei the
letters express the deep emotions of “in the time of war – your mother. Your
grandmother. That there is suffering and their deep love” (279). Grandma Kato and Naomi’s mother who had
gone to visit the former’s ailing mother in Tokyo were stuck in Japan with the
start of the Second World War. When both of them had gone to Nagasaki to help
Grandma’s niece Setsuko with the birth of her second child, they learn that
Grandma’s sister, her husband and their mother had died in bombings. Grandma
Kato, mother and Chieko, the second child of Setsuko survive the atomic bomb
dropped on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945. However, they are in miserable condition
and have witnessed the horrifying suffering and death of other members of the
family and their acquaintances. In 1949, Chieko was suffering from leukemia. After
learning about the horrifying suffering her mother endured, Naomi observes “The
letters take months to reach Grandfather. They take years to reach me.
Grandfather gives the letters to Aunt Emily. Aunt Emily sends letters to the
Government. The Government makes paper airplanes out of our lives and flies us
out of the windows” (291). The letters of
the Katos function both as instruments of concealing vital information from the
Sansei, employed primarily by the Issei and Nisei to spare the next generation
from the tremendous pain that would accompany the revelation of the truth, as
much as silent documents of personal history.
One
must also note that the Japanese Canadians become racial subalterns in Obasan
not only because of the all pervasive silence they maintain about their
suffering, but also as the appeals and petitions sent to the government
officials by Nisei activists such as Aunt Emily with reference to confiscation
of property and businesses as well as internment and separation of families in
the name of national security fall on deaf ears (44-45).
Naomi and her elder brother Stephen, the Sansei, also become victims of the
ugly undercurrents of racial subalternity while attending school in Bayfarm
internment camp in Slocan. Verbal and physical abuse are the means of
establishing and maintaining the racial status quo among kids. The older
Japanese Canadian kids use violence against humans as well as animals to vent
out their rage in the face of humiliation. Stephen faces violence in school. His
glasses and violin are broken.
Print
media and consumer products also contribute to the indoctrination of children
and serve as instruments of racial discrimination and systematic
marginalization of the Japanese Canadians in popular culture. Stephen is given “the
Yellow Peril War game” made in Canada where there are “weak, small yellow pawns”.
Naomi comes across a character called Chicken Little in Little Tales for
Little Folks. As a child, she associates this with the yellow chicken
killed by the white hen in their backyard. Naomi is disturbed and does not want
to be discriminated along racial lines. Her deep-seated fear and insecurity due
to prejudice is summarized in “Yellow is to be chicken. I am not yellow” (181). Percy Bower a boy in Stephen’s school
calls him “gimpy Jap” and challenges him to fight with his group. Naomi
witnesses the brutal killing of a chicken by Sho, a Japanese seventh grader and
Danny, Stephen’s classmate. A white girl blames Naomi for keeping her helpless
kitten in the skating rink. The images of the helpless animals are symbols of
the helplessness of the Sansei kids during internment and as victims of racial
discrimination. Peers tell Stephen and Naomi that they would be sent away as
they are “Japs”. When the children question their father about their identity
he asserts that they are Canadians. The profound conflict in Naomi’s mind is
expressed when she says “It is a riddle, Stephen tells me. We are both the
enemy and not the enemy” (84). The
wartime measures prosecuted the Japanese Canadians for their Japanese ethnic roots
in times of war hysteria and refused to acknowledge the fact that a majority of
those interned were Canadian citizens like Naomi and Stephen. Their race was
wielded as a weapon against the Japanese Canadians, in this case, and Japanese
North Americans. in general, in the face of war, expulsion and internment. Race
became a determining factor in the institutionalized subordination of the
Japanese Canadians during the said period. As Sunahara notes in The Politics
of Racism:
With the announcement of a total uprooting,
citizenship became irrelevant. Whether Issei or Nisei, Japanese alien or
Canadian citizen, everyone had become an enemy alien…. In addition, all
Japanese Canadians, unlike the German and Italian aliens, were required to
observe a dusk-to-dawn curfew and to abandon their homes, farms and businesses
for an unknown destination.(46)
Japanese Values of
the Issei and their Silence
After
having examined the socio-historical context of the select texts to understand
the wartime measures that were a culmination of racial prejudice and
discrimination along with war hysteria, while perceiving Japanese North
Americans as racial subalterns during their internment, it is necessary to
comprehend the cultural values that made a subordinate position palatable for
the time being particularly due the harsh measures. In the literary works that
have been analyzed, the Issei emerge as custodians of the Japanese aspects of
the community identity. Stephen Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez trace the core
values the Issei brought to North America. The Issei were brought up in the
Japanese social system that emphasized family as a basic unit of society which
was to be the foundation of the powerful nation the leaders set out to build. “Loyalty
and filial piety were emphasized to counter “self-conscious individualism”“ (Fugita and Fernandez 15). Filial ties were
extended to local ties seen in villages, cities and neighbourhoods. In
Fukutake’s terms cited by Fugita and Fernandez “familistic communitarianism”
inculcated on the basis of observing customs, obeying authority and preserving
interpersonal harmony was idealized over decisions made by a rational and
autonomous self (16).
Majority
of the American and Canadian Issei belonged to the farming class that had borne
the brunt of the Meiji (1868 – 1912) land tax reforms. They saw temporary
immigration as an “opportunity to raise their status in Japan, the so-called
sojourner orientation” (Fugita and Fernandez 16).
The promise to come home in glory was a crucial driving force for the Issei (“Come Home in Glory”). Issei had Meiji Era
aspirations of educational achievements, social mobility and were open to
collaborated efforts as a community. Two significant principles dictating the
social attitudes of the Issei were Wa, which is better translated as
“conflict-avoidance”, by Miyamoto, Fugita and Kashima, and “Giri-Ninjô” that is “obligation
and duty” (giri) and “responsiveness to the deeper feelings of others” (ninjô)
(Fugita and Fernandez 17).
The
uniquely Japanese social attitudes and responses get reflected in Kogawa’s Obasan.
Kogawa aptly names the novel after Ayako Obasan who herself is an Issei and the
literary scene of the novel is dominated by Isseis. The cultural foundations of
Issei of prioritizing norms and preferences of the family and community over
individual will and choices, whether in moments of glory or crisis, -a tendency
of avoiding conflict; fulfilling duties and giving importance to emotions and
responses of others, resulted in preservation and inculcation of attitudes seen
in the text. These values proved to be useful particularly in shaping the
general response to internment and coping mechanisms that were employed
thereafter.
Sunahara
quotes from the personal interview of Katsuko Hideka Halfhide, housing
coordinator at Kaslo internment camp in British Columbia, conducted by her
while writing Politics of Racism:
One of the reasons the Japanese people were
able to adapt… was that they always had this tradition of working in groups...This
was the whole background they could draw from: a great stability and a great
sense of social values.... underlying it all was the old tradition [of working
together, tonarigumi]… (81)
The Japanese core
values and cultural codes such as enryo (reserve or restraint), gamen
(patience and perseverance) and shikataga-nai (resignation) enabled the
Issei and the Nisei to endure internment. (Sunahara,
The Politics of Racism 149). Naomi’s mother in spite of being a Nisei
has been constructed as an epitome of enryo, gamen and giri-ninjô
, perhaps to indicate the great cultural influence the Issei parents had on
their Nisei children, particularly the elder ones, given the first-borns have
special significance in Japanese culture. Giri-ninjô, that is, prioritizing
filial obligations is seen when she accompanies her mother Mrs. Kato
while visiting her ailing grandmother in Tokyo even during the war. They
further go to Nagasaki to look after Setsuko who is about to give birth to her
second child. Enryo and gamen, that is, restraint and endurance
are an integral part of her nature given that she does not abandon Chieko,
Setsuko’s daughter and a leukemia patient after the bombing of Nagasaki and
insists on returning to Canada only if she can bring Chieko with her. Naomi’s
mother had an option of returning to Canada after war being a Canadian citizen.
Naomi
is able to transcend her personal grief due to separation from her mother at a
tender age and comprehend the significance of fulfillment of family obligations,
restraint and endurance in life of her mother, in circumstances of terrible
suffering, deaths and absences (Kogawa 294),
perhaps because her upbringing and cultural milieu dictated her mother’s
priorities, only after the elderly in her family break the culture of silence
and reveal the truths that they had concealed from her. It is towards the end
of the novel that Naomi is able to piece together the scattered clues to
cultural codes of her mother, which she inherited from the Issei, such as the
composed response of her mother instead of a bitter scolding during the chicken
incident in her childhood (71) and an
advice by Obasan during Grandma Nakane’s funeral of not being Wagamama, that
is, selfish and inconsiderate by not honouring the wishes of others (151) and understand that she was expected to
consider her personal attachment to her mother and the resultant grief after
separating from her as secondary to the significant filial obligations. The
sacrifice of personal emotions render Naomi’s loved ones with the quality of yasahi
and kawaiso; both values are about being tender and helpful
to others in moments of crisis.
Obasan
embodies restraint when she joins the elders in maintaining protective silence.
Even in a moment of crisis, while Obasan’s family is being sent to the
internment camp, she is gentle and caring towards Kuniko-san, a young woman
with a premature baby but with no diapers. She also serves Nomura-Obasan, an
invalid woman after giving her shelter in their barrack during the internment (62). Naomi’s process of realization is
completed when she concludes “I had not known that Grief had such gentle eyes –
eyes reflecting my uncle’s eyes, my mother’s eyes – all the familiar lost eyes
of Love” (295).
Shikataga-nai,
that is, “It cannot be helpedʼʼ or “I must resign myself to my fate” was an
immediate response of the community to the circumstances of internment which
were beyond their control (Sunahara, The
Politics of Racism 79). However, they were persistent and focused on survival
in the harsh conditions. Thus, cultural codes inherited from the Issei such as
restraint, resilience, endurance, resignation, filial obligations, being
sensitive to the needs of others and avoiding conflict contribute to the
reticence of Japanese North American community and place them in the
subordinate position making them racial subalterns due internment.
Internment and
Issei in Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine
Julie
Otsuka, a Sansei herself, deals with the dark chapter of Japanese American
internment in her novel When the Emperor was Divine (2002). Her debut
novel “is based on Otsuka’s own family history: her
grandfather was arrested by the FBI as a suspected spy for Japan the day after
Pearl Harbor was bombed, and her mother, uncle and grandmother spent three
years in an internment camp in Topaz, Utah” (“About Julie Otsuka”). A salient feature of Otsuka’s narrative style is the use
of unnamed protagonists and characters. This is done not only to construct
representatives of the community in question, but also to create collectivities
to foreground the inherent silence of the racial subaltern. Such collectivities
are seen in Otsuka’s second novel The Buddha in the Attic (2011). Not
assigning names to her protagonists, is a way of drawing home the point that
while constructing a narrative around the racial subaltern, that is the
Japanese North Americans, the dominant whites ensured that the subaltern is
perceived as a dangerous and perilous collective entity which is resonated in
racist and derogatory terms such as “Yellow Peril”.
The
boy, a Nisei has imbibed the perceptions of the dominant whites. “For it was
true, they all looked alike. Black hair. Slanted eyes. High cheekbones. Thick
glasses. Thin lips. Bad teeth. Unknowable. Inscrutable… The little yellow man” (Otsuka 49). This description of the Japanese
resonates the racial stereotypes prevalent in the society, where individuals
were reduced to their common, racial, physical attributes. They were thought of
as an enigmatic whole, particularly conveyed through the two adjectives “unknowable”
and “inscrutable”.
The
protagonists of Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine are the woman, the
boy and the girl. The novel begins in the spring of 1942 in Berkeley with
passing of the evacuation order for Japanese Americans. Every chapter is a
stage in the evacuation process. The chapters “Evacuation order no. 19”, “Train”
describe the preparation and commute to the internment camp. “When the Emperor
was Divine” shows the harsh reality of the internment camp, in this case, Topaz,
Utah. “In a Stranger’s Backyard” depicts the return of the family from the
internment camp and the numerous hurdles, racial prejudice and discrimination
they face in order to get reintegrated into the society. The last chapter is
titled “Confession” which highlights the preconceptions of the dominant race,
the whites, about the subordinate people, the Japanese Americans. There are
stringent rules regarding law and order, discipline, language, food, religion,
almost an exercise of erasing the culture of the racial subalterns and training
them in the dominant, white, mainstream culture. The rules aimed at taking ultimate
control over the community, such that every aspect of their lives could be
determined and dictated
The rules about the fence were simple; You
could not go over it, you could not go under it, you could not go around it,
you could not go through it. There were rules about language, too: Here we
say…Safety Council not Internal Police; Residents, not evacuees” (61).
Certain
instructions are italicized not only to add emphasis but to expose the power
dynamics that allow gross violations of rights of the subaltern - their
evacuation, internment, unquestionable interference and stronghold on the part
of the white majority in the name of war hysteria. The instructions continue “No
books in Japanese… No Emperor-worshipping Shintos allowed” (61). Every aspect of the Japanese American
life including time and space are regulated and supervised. Derogatory racial
terms are used on the street by people and on the boards even by authorities:
There were the rules about time: No Japs out
after eight p.m. And space: No Japs allowed to travel more than five miles from
their homes. ... the signs that read INSTRUCTIONS TO ALL PERSONS OF JAPANESE
ANCESTRY went up all over town. (76)
Destruction of all
the objects indicating the Japanese aspects of their identity by the mother shows
the deep psychological impact of racial discrimination and war hysteria on the
racial subaltern community of Japanese Americans. Being an Issei from Kagoshima7,
the mother responds with restraint, chooses conflict-avoidance and prioritizes
the safety of her family over protesting unjust measures. She chooses to
eliminate objects that would identify them as people of Japanese ancestry and
would make them vulnerable in the light of harsh, wartime regulations. Her
actions are symbolic of being forced to erase their ethnic past, their
collective memories as a race, their traditions, which were symbolized by the
objects that had been cherished over generations, and annihilating their roots through
expulsion and confinement. It was a long-term measure to enable the dominant
race to modify them after they return from internment under the pretext of
facilitating integration and assimilation:
That evening she had lit a bonfire in the
yard and burned all the letters from Kagoshima. She burned the family
photographs and the three silk kimonos she had brought over with her nineteen
years ago from Japan…She ripped up the flag of the red rising sun. She smashed the
tea set and the Imari dishes (75)
Most of the War
Relocation Centers8 were built in deserts and with similar temporary
structures and surrounded by fences. The one at Utah is described in When
the Emperor was Divine. “It was 1942. Utah. Late summer. A city of
tar-paper barracks behind a barbed-wire fence on a dusty alkaline plain high up
in the desert” (Otsuka 49).
The
War Relocation Authorities were forced to allow recruitment of people from the
camps due to labour shortages. Taking up work in the farms during harvest
season with the hope of securing freedom for limited period did not resolve the
issues for the internees. In fact, they could get a glimpse of the worsening
situation outside.
They said they’d been shot at. Spat on.
Refused entrance to the local diner. The movie theater. The dry goods store.
They said the signs in the windows were the same wherever they went: No JAPS
ALLOWED. Life was easier, they said, on this side of the fence. (67)
The last line
indicates how the racial subalterns come to accept their confinement in the
face of the vulnerable position that they occupy in the dynamics.
Rumours
of segregation based on gender; sterilization; withdrawal of citizenship,
assassination; deportation to Japan; being held hostage for exchange of
American prisoners of war and being handed over to Chinese are rampant among
the internees in the text. A deep fear and anxiety which were the results of
the uncertainty created by the catastrophic mass evacuation are evident in
these rumours. The complete authority of the dominant race and the narrative
woven to justify the grave injustice as much as to silence the racial subaltern
is seen in the following lines “You’ve been brought here for your own
protection, they were told. It was all in the interest of national security. It
was a matter of military necessity. It was an opportunity for them to prove
their loyalty” (70).
On
the fifth day after father is arrested by the FBI, the family gets a note from
immigration detention center in San Francisco informing them that around eighty
three Japanese have already been sent away to camps and he is waiting for his
loyalty hearing (90). The loyalty
questionnaire was a bureaucratic instrument created by the War Department and
the War Relocation Authority in 1943 to apparently test the loyalty of Japanese
Americans and to help them form an all-Nisei combat unit. The War Relocation
Authority borrowed the questionnaire to begin a probe to test loyalty of adult
Issei and Nisei women. Question number 27 and 28 became controversial as they
asked the respondents whether they would serve in the army no matter where they
were posted and whether they would pledge unconditional allegiance to the U.S.
as well as whether they would renounce all affiliations to the Emperor of
Japan. The loyalty questionnaire was a result of deep-seated suspicion about
the Japanese Americans. Okihiro observes,
…[t]he Pearl Harbor attack revived the
stereotype, and public attitudes toward the Japanese crystallized around the
familiar themes of treachery and disloyalty, and the Japanese became the
objects of white suspicion, anxiety, and anger. The old stereotype fed rumors of
espionage and sabotage, and the attack gave substance to the oft repeated fears
of the “yellow peril” and the peaceful invasion. The Japanese stereotype
circulated in rumor and opinion, in private and public declarations, by
unionists and politicians, among farm groups and patriots (112).
The
Emperor had an influential, in fact, a sacred position in Japanese society.
There was imperial influence on the cultural institutions of the Japanese
Americans as well. This influence gets resonated in the title of the novel When
the Emperor was Divine. The anxiety and insecurity of the wartime
authorities got manifested in their insistence on evacuation of the community
and holding them behind barbed wires with constant surveillance. Okihiro adds further
“race hatred constituted a compelling argument for mass evacuation— to protect
them from the threat of riots and acts of violence” (112). Determining loyalty of the internees towards the U.S. took
official form through certain special provisions that Fugita and Fernandez
point out,
In early 1943, the Army and the WRA attempted
to determine the loyalty of individuals in all ten of the camps …This process
was called registration. Ultimately. Tule Lake was chosen to become a
segregation center and house the so-called “disloyals” from all of the WRA
camps. (56)
In Otsuka’s novel,
the mother responds positively to swearing allegiance to the U.S. and forswearing
loyalty to Imperial Japan. “She’d been in America for almost twenty years now.
But she did not want to cause any trouble … or be labeled disloyal. She did not
want to be sent back to Japan… Your father is here. The important thing is that
we stay together” (Otsuka 99). As argued
earlier, the mother exhibits Issei mindset by prioritizing her family and
avoiding conflict even in a critical situation of pledging loyalty.
Otsuka
highlights the various impediments faced by the Japanese Americans in the
process of reintegration in the society after internment. The house of the
family is in a miserable condition. There are evidences of occupation in their
absence. However, the neighbour who had been requested to find tenants has not
paid a single penny to the family as rent. Some of their possessions are gone.
These fictional recreations can be corroborated with actual accounts from the
former internees. For instance, Fugita and Fernandez note “Most of the
incarcerees who left camp to pick up the threads of their work and family lives
faced serious hurdles. For one, the majority had little remaining in the way of
economic resources. The period was particularly humiliating for many Issei who
had lost all that they had worked for”. The pre-war ethnic and socio-economic
networks had also been destroyed which in turn reflected in the loss of
community ties (107-108).
Otsuka
depicts a poignant picture of how the internees were prepared for going back
into the society. The officials termed the orientation as “unobtrusive
assimilation” (Fugita and Fernandez 108).
Embedded in the enlisting of the characteristic italicized instructions are the
dictates of the dominant white race to the racial subaltern to adhere to the racial
limitations and status quo, “we’d been told, weeks before, in a mess hall
lecture” on “…how to behave in the Outside World… Speak only English. Do not
walk down the street in groups of more than three…Do not draw attention to
yourselves in any way” (Otsuka 122).The father, towards the end of the novel, maintains a
protective silence characteristic to the Issei as the children note “[h]e never
said a word to us about the years he’d been away…never talked about politics,
or his arrest… He never mentioned his loyalty hearing before the Alien Enemy
Control Unit…We didn’t want to know… All we wanted to do, now that we were back
in the world, was forget” (133). He
suffered from symptoms of anxiety, extreme irritation and suspicion. He serves
as the Issei representative of the internees. The last chapter of the novel
titled “Confession” depicts the acute guilt and tendency of self-loathing in
the male members of the community, who had been arrested and interrogated by
the FBI under the pretext of national security. Fugita and Fernandez shed more
light on the long lasting consequences of the internment:
When the resettlers left camp for the last
time, not only did they face numerous social and economic uncertainties, but
psychological ones as well. On the personal and perhaps even subconscious
level, some former incarcerees felt either anguish about being powerless to
resist the injustice which had been meted out to them or, on the other hand,
thought that their own or the ethnic group's inadequacies were somehow
responsible for their treatment. (112)
After
analyzing Kogawa’s Obasan and Otsuka’s When the Emperor was Divine,
the Issei, in particular, and the Japanese North Americans, in general, emerge
as racially subaltern group during the internment period. Naomi’s paternal and
maternal grandparents, that is, the Nakanes and the Katos respectively, Uncle
Isamu and Ayako Obasan are the Issei in Kogawa’s Obasan. The
woman/mother and the father are the Issei in Otsuka’s When the Emperor was
Divine. They hold on to their core Japanese values and cultural codes such
as restraint, family obligations, reticence or protective silence,
conflict-avoidance, endurance and resignation even during a catastrophic
disruption like the internment. The restrained response of the Issei and their
withdrawal into protective silence make them racial subalterns of the society
depicted in the respective texts. These characters pave way to the discussions
and the analysis of the role of racial politics, racial discrimination and
prejudice during war hysteria and wartime measures that targeted the racial
subaltern community of Japanese North Americans in marginalizing and silencing
the community during the internment.
End Notes
1 Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 signed on 19
February 1942
2 Minister King’s cabinet approved
Order-in-Council P.C. 1486 passed on 24 February 1942
3 The term ‘Issei’ refers to the first
generation of Japanese immigrants. ‘Nisei’ is the second generation and
‘Sansei’ is the third generation.
4 For an overview of various acts passed by
American government and Canadian government with an aim of regulating Japanese
immigration, possession of assets and citizenship see discussions in the works
of Ann Gomer Sunahara (2000); Gary Okihiro (2001); Stephen Fugita and Marilyn
Fernandez (2004)
5 British Columbia Security Commission was an
agency created to supervise the evacuation and internment (Robinson n.p.).
6 After the expulsion of Japanese Canadians,
they were segregated based on sex and were kept in former women’s building and
livestock barns at Hastings Park. Those who protested against the segregation
were punished. Many men were sent to work in road labour camps. Many opted to
work on sugar beet farms outside British Columbia and were exploited in name of
apparently guarding their freedom (Robinson n.p.).
7 There are autobiographical elements in the
novel. ‘The woman’ was Otsuka’s grandmother, ‘the boy’ was her uncle and ‘the
girl’ was her mother (“About Julie Otsuka”).
8 See description of Minidoka WRA and The Tule
Lake WRA (Fugita and Fernandez 55-56).
Works Cited
“About Julie Otsuka.” Julie Otsuka. Accessed 16 March
2016 www.julieotsuka.com/about.
“Archived History Beginning Japanese Explore the
Communities.” 13 January 2005.
Library and Archives Canada. Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.
www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/settlement/kids/021013-2141.1-e.html.
“Canada's Japanese Community.” Asian Heritage Month.
Radio Canada International.
Accessed 26 Nov. 2019. www.rcinet.ca/patrimoine-asiatique-en/
le-mois-du-patrimoine-asiatique-au-canada/lepopee-des-canadiens-
dorigine-japonaise/.
Chaturvedi, Vinayak. Introduction. Mapping Subaltern
Studies and the Postcolonial,
edited by Vinayak Chaturvedi, London:
Verso, 2000, pp. vii-xix.
“Come Home in Glory.” 2014. Nikkei Tapestry: Japanese
Canadians in Southern
Alberta. GALT Museum and Archives.
Accessed 25 November 2019
nikkei-tapestry.ca/gloire-glory-eng.html.
Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.
“Summary.”
Personal Justice Denied: Report of the
Commission on Wartime Relocation
and Internment of Civilians. Seattle: Civil Liberties
Public Education
Fund and U Washington P, 1997. 1-23.Web.
Fugita, Stephen S. and Marilyn Fernandez. Altered Lives,
Enduring Community:
Japanese Americans Remember their
World War II Incarceration.
Seattle: U of Washington P, 2004.Web.
Guha, Ranajit, and
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, editors. Selected Subaltern Studies.
Delhi: Oxford UP, 1988. Web
Houston, Jeanne Wakatsuki and James D. Houston. Farewell
to Manzanar.
New York: Ember, 1973.Print.
Kogawa, Joy. Obasan. New York: Anchor Books,
1994.Print.
Landry, Donna and Gerald MacLean, The Spivak Reader.
New York:
Routledge, 1996.Web.
Okihiro, Gary Y. The Columbia Guide to Asian American
History.
New York: Columbia UP, 2001.Web.
Otsuka, Julie. When the Emperor was Divine. New York: Anchor Books,
2002. Print.
Pandey, Gyanendra. “The Subaltern as Subaltern Citizen.” Economic
and
Political Weekly 41.46 (2006): 4735-4741.
Robinson, Greg. “Internment of Japanese Canadians.” 15
February 2017.
The Canadian Encyclopedia. Accessed 26 Nov. 2019.
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/internment-of-
japanese-canadians.
Sartre, Jean-Paul.
Preface. The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon, Grove
Weidenfeld,
1963, pp. 7-31. Sunahara,
Ann. “Japanese Canadians.”
31 January 2011. The Canadian Encyclopedia.
Accessed
25 Nov. 2019
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/
japanese-canadians.
---. The Politics of Racism: The Uprooting of Japanese
Canadians during the Second
World War. Ottawa: Ann Gomer Sunahara, 2000. Print.
“The Issei.” 2014. Nikkei Tapestry: Japanese Canadians in
South Alberta.
GALT Museum and Archives. Accessed 25 Nov. 2019.
nikkei-tapestry.ca/issei-eng.html.
Uchida, Yoshiko. Journey to Topaz. Berkeley,
California: Heyday Books,
1971. Print.
West, Cornel. “The
New Cultural Politics of Difference.” The Cultural Studies
Reader, edited
by Simon During, Routledge, 1993, pp. 256-267.