The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 29 (2018)
Copyright © 2018 Masumi Izumi. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with thisnotice included, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed,
electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.

Gila River Concentration Camp and the Historical
Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration

Masumi Izumi*

Introduction
On July 20, 1942, a concentration camp was opened in Rivers, Arizona, toincarcerate Japanese Americans removed from the West Coast. The camp,
officially named the Gila River War Relocation Center, stood on the Gila
River Indian Community reservation, the land originally inhabited by the
Akmel O’odham and the Pee Posh peoples.1 The Gila River Indian Council,
the caretakers of the land, had not approved of the establishment of a prison
camp on their territory. It was the white administrators of two federal
agencies, the Office of Indian Affairs and the War Relocation Authority(WRA), who decided on the construction of the camp on the reservation toutilize the impounded population for the “improvement” of the land.2
The Gila River War Relocation Center was one of two wartime
incarceration camps for Japanese Americans constructed in Arizona.3 Gila
River was located approximately forty-five miles south of Phoenix in the
Sonoran Desert.4 The other camp, the Colorado River War Relocation
Center, commonly called Poston, was built in northern Arizona, also on an
indigenous reservation. Poston housed the largest detainee population ofover 17,000, while Gila River housed 13,348 at its peak. This made Gila
River the second-largest camp among the ten regular war relocation centers,
and the fourth-most populated community in the state of Arizona between*Professor, Doshisha University

67

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1942 and 1944.5 Gila River was administered solely by the WRA, while
Poston was under the joint control of the WRA and the Office of IndianAffairs.
The relocation and mass incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans
during World War II is one of the most heavily researched topics among thehistorical experiences of Asian Americans. Existing literature ranges fromanalyses of the governmental decision on mass uprooting; legal studies on
related Supreme Court cases; personal and collective recollections of thecamp experiences; literary and fictional texts depicting the removal andincarceration as well as its aftermaths; literary and cultural criticisms ofrepresentations of this episode; psychological analyses of its impacts on
individuals as well as the ethnic community as a whole to sociologicalstudies on identity and community formations by Japanese Americans
within and after the camps.
There has been a disparity, however, in how much attention each camp
has received from historians and other scholars, even among the ten war
relocation centers.6 Moreover, certain topics have been focused on whileother topics have received little scholarly attention. For example, much
exploration has been done on the insecure identity of the Nisei (secondgeneration Japanese Americans), who were denied their birth-rightcitizenship, while fewer studies look at the experiences of the Issei (firstgeneration Japanese Americans), who were technically enemy aliens, orKibei (Nisei who was raised in Japan and returned to the United States),
whose cultural affiliation was “suspect” as far as the administrators wereconcerned.7 While accounts and studies on Manzanar and Topaz camps havebeen published for decades, it is only in the past dozen years thatpublications have increased on Tule Lake, the camp that was converted into
a segregation center after the “loyalty questionnaire” in 1943.8 While manystudies have perceived the incarcerees’ resistance in the camps as an
expression of resentment at the deprivation of civil rights, only in the past
two decades did scholars start to look at the incarcerees’ complex
sentiments, which arose from their dual affiliations with Japan and theUnited States and their equivocal affections for their “two homelands.”9
Finally, while there are many books and articles on camp administration andincarcerees’ resistance, art, and literature, there have been fewer publications
analyzing the material aspects of camp lives, such as food, clothing,consumer goods and services, and the development of the physicalinfrastructure of the camps during their years of operation.
So far, Gila River has been one of the least studied of the ten WRA

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camps.10 The absence of academic interest in this camp can be attributed tothe particular ways in which the historical memories of Japanese American
incarceration have been constructed vis-à-vis the evolution of the scholarly
field of Asian American Studies. After World War II, silence prevailed in theJapanese American community.11 Nisei parents did not speak about theirincarceration even to their children, and the subject was not taught at school.
Sansei (third-generation Japanese Americans) did not know what happened
to their community in the early 1940s until they engaged in the radicalsocial movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s.12 The number ofwritings about Asian American experiences increased in and after the 1970s,
thanks to the Yellow Power movement and the establishment of Asian
American Studies programs in universities. Japanese American mass
incarceration came to be generally viewed as a primary example of a
racially motivated civil rights violation in American history, particularly
after the Redress settlement in 1988.13
As the large-scale uncovering of wartime events involving the JapaneseAmerican community did not start until the 1970s, Issei narratives weredifficult to gather for Asian American scholars and curators. Most of theimmigrant generation had already died by then, and very few Sansei spokeor read Japanese, even though the Issei generation left bountiful written
accounts of their experiences in Japanese-language newspapers, community
association records, memoirs, poetry, literature, and personal diaries. The
representations of Japanese American wartime incarceration have reliedheavily on Nisei’s memories expressed in English. Excavation of Japaneselanguage sources had to wait until a number of Japan-based scholars started
researching Japanese American history.14
Another feature of the collective historical memory of the camps emerged
from the politics of Asian American Studies. Because the discipline of Asian
American Studies evolved in the political and social activism in the 1970s,
the Japanese American wartime incarceration was first studied in the light ofAmerica’s historical racism and civil rights violations. This has induced
scholars to focus on racial prejudice on the side of the policymakers andadministrators—the creators and keepers of the American concentration
camps—and the hardship suffered by Japanese Americans—the victims ofwartime racial injustice. From this perspective, there was little incentive totalk about the Gila River War Relocation Center, because the camp wasconsidered to be the least oppressive of all the WRA camps.15 The camp built
only one watchtower, which was taken down shortly after, and no barbed
wire fences surrounded the camp.16 Unlike Manzanar and Tule Lake, where

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severe resistance against the administration resulted in the deaths of someincarcerees, Gila River was relatively well governed. There was noorganized resistance like the general strike in Poston or the draft refusal
campaign at Heart Mountain. Despite one incident at Gila River in which a
Kibei man was beaten up, the Gila River camp produced no draft resisters,
and the rate of “no” answers to loyalty questions were less than 10 percent.17
This all shows that there is still more work needed to fully understand thewartime mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans.
In this article I explore the work and thoughts of the Issei men andwomen in the Gila River War Relocation Center to enrich the historicalmemories of Japanese American incarceration. I first discuss the Issei’sefforts at improving the physical infrastructure of the camp and consider
how these findings modify our interpretation of such terms as gaman andshikataganai, which are often attached to the Issei’s passivity in theirsubjugation to racist policies. In the later sections, I analyze a regular
newspaper column, Fujin no Sekai (Women’s world), in the Japaneselanguage section of the Gila News Courier (GNC). The columnist was an
Issei editor/writer, and her essays reveal how Issei women wrote as well as
acted to sustain the general morale of the camp residents in the face oftremendous hardships. I also show that the column was written by a“progressive” woman who thought education and self-determination for
women were important. This image is divergent from the conventional
images of Issei mothers remembered by their Nisei daughters.
Juxtaposing the Issei’s behavior in Gila River with the commonly held
images of the Issei during World War II, I elucidate how collective historicalmemories channeled into certain approved grooves fail to tell the wholestory. The Issei’s active involvement in camp activities complicates ourunderstanding of Japanese American wartime experiences and expands ouranalytical lens for investigating what Japanese American mass incarceration
meant in American history.
Re-interpreting Gaman and Shikataganai
Anyone who has studied Japanese American history has encountered thewords, gaman and shikataganai. Writer Hisaye Yamamoto rememberedthese terms as the ideas the Nisei were “brought up . . . with.”18 Canadian
Nisei novelist and poet Joy Kogawa wrote in her semi-autobiographicalnovel Obasan: “Kodomo no tame—for the sake of the children—gaman shi
masho—let us endure,” a much-quoted phrase uttered by the main character

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Naomi’s Issei aunt who sheltered Naomi and her sibling from learning about
the horrible death of their missing mother.19 Gaman is commonly interpreted
as a word of helplessness and submission in the face of injustice, a “call toquietly accept oppression, especially in relation to ‘camp.’ ”20 Shikataganai
literally means “nothing can be done.”
Mira Shimabukuro, who investigated what gaman meant for Nisei writers
and activists, found some positive interpretations in various works byauthors in Japanese American Studies, such as “stick things out at all costs,”“bear up,” “self-discipline,” and “do one’s best in times of frustration andadversity.”21 These interpretations emphasize resilience and strength, albeit apassive stance toward life in which one endures the unendurable.
While the Nisei remembered their Issei parents in these terms, how did
the Issei perceive and cope with their lives in the camps? Shimabukuro
focuses on how the Nisei internalized gaman, but she does not take into
account the directional relationship in which such words as gaman andshikataganai were uttered. After all, the Issei said these words to their Nisei
children, but Shimabukuro’s analysis of gaman in relation to writing by
Nisei exclusively relies on texts composed in English.22 Instead of digging
into the Japanese American psyche in duress, here I look at the social
contexts in which these words were uttered. As for the contexts, I rely
primarily on my past research findings on the Issei’s work in education andagriculture at Gila River. Notwithstanding the WRA’s policy of excluding
the Issei from the decision-making structure in camp management, the Gila
River administrators allowed the Issei to retain their de facto leadership.
This exceptional intracommunity power relationship gave the Issei relativeautonomy in Gila River. In such an environment, how did the Issei act, andwhat did terms such as gaman and shikataganai mean?
The camp records on education show that Issei parents worked very hard
to make sure that their children’s education did not suffer from their removal
and confinement.23 The Gila River Educational Program Final Report
describes that, to alleviate the negative impact of the relocation on theirchildren, parents believed that “a school as good or better than former
schools was a must.”24 PTA enrollment in the camp schools was significantly
high. 25 Furthermore, the incarcerees labored to assure physicalimprovements in school facilities, such as libraries, science andwoodworking labs, football fields and gymnasiums.26 Although the students
complained that the school had set “too high standards in the loads ofhomework,” and they found the classes far more difficult than those in theirformer schools, it helped retain their morale and prepared them for72    Masumi Izumi

resettlement and reintegration into the society outside.27
Reports on the agricultural production at Gila River reveal how the Issei
farmers were instrumental in producing huge amount of vegetables, such as
daikon (large white radishes), lettuce, carrots, spinach, beans, etc., as well as
fruits like watermelons, cantaloupes and strawberries.28 The list of produce
also included Japanese vegetable names, such as nappa, takana, shungiku,
shirouri, and aouri. During the most productive fiscal year between July
1943 and June 1944, Gila River produced 4,804 tons of crops, of which
1,777 tons were consumed in Gila River and 3,027 tons were shipped toother camps.29 The farmland expanded to 1,194 acres, and with double
cropping it equaled to 1,600 acres under cultivation. Gila River also
operated a successful livestock industry, which had dairy, meat, swine, andpoultry sections. The agricultural produce at Gila River improved the diet ofJapanese Americans incarcerated in all ten WRA camps. Far from passively
enduring injustice, the Issei actively strived for the survival of thecommunity.
The Issei’s labor to improve the camp infrastructure needs to be seen in
relation to the larger power structure involved in the Japanese American
removal and incarceration policy. Government officials took advantage of
the Issei’s agricultural skills and virtually free labor to cultivate and irrigate
the Western land, which the federal government came to possess as a resultof their conquest of the indigenous peoples.30 The government utilized theincarcerees’ labor not only to economically feed and manage the relocatedpopulation but also to increase the productivity of the land. Furthermore, byrepresenting Japanese Americans to mainstream Americans as a submissive
ethnic minority who would turn their strife inward both as a community andas individuals through such behavioral values as gaman and shikataganai, ahegemonic historical narrative constructed Japanese Americans as loyal
citizens and a “model minority,” while positioning them to be theaccomplices of the pervasive biopower, skillfully managed by paternalistic
camp administrators who had much experience in managing the indigenous
communities in the Southwest.31 Therefore, we need to be wary of uncriticalpraise of the Japanese American incarcerees for their lack of social
disturbances in the camp.
At the same time, my work as well as other scholars’ in regard to Issei’s
behavior in camps shows that, even though they were working under thecontrol of and pressure from camp administrators, the incarcerees wereselective about which work they devoted themselves to with rigor.32 In Gila
River as well as in other camps, they voluntarily worked hard on the tasks

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73

they thought would benefit the community but refused to work on projects
that they did not consider fair or that they felt hampered the welfare of camp
residents. In most cases, resisters were ultimately coerced into obeyingorders, but governmental records and camp field notes show that the Issei
went through tough negotiations with the administration and in many cases
gained concessions such as higher wages or better supplies. In the case of
Gila River, some incarcerees refused to work in the cotton fields owned bywhite owners outside the camp, even though the pay was much better thanthat gained from working in the camp farms. The Issei organized because“they objected to having skilled workers who could be employed to thebenefit of the project being lost to project use by going into outside labor.”33
During the process of negotiations, WRA officers resorted to threatening thenegotiators with the possibility of bringing in the military.34
These struggles and negotiations indicate that the Issei did not passively
gaman the unfair treatment inflicted on them. While urging endurance andpatience for their Nisei children, most of whom were still minors, the Issei
tried everything they could to alleviate their plight and improve living
conditions within the camps. Gaman and shikataganai were words the Issei
uttered directed toward themselves and their children to “temporarily” urge
patience and endurance, while they worked toward a better future within andoutside the camps.35 Many past works on Japanese American incarceration
shed light on how the Nisei strived to leave the camps and regain freedom.
While these works are important, more attention needs to be paid to theIssei’s contribution to building and improving the material infrastructure of
the camps, which was essential for the community’s physical survival.
Uplifting the Uprooted Community
While the Issei men toiled on the land and constructed buildings thatfacilitated camp lives for them and their families, how did Issei women copewith life in the desert camp? Were they as silent and accepting of injustice as
their Nisei daughters remembered them to be? To elucidate the Issei
women’s thoughts and actions, in this section I look at a serial essay column
Fujin no Sekai that appeared in the Japanese-language section of the Gila
River camp newspaper.
The camp paper Gila News Courier was launched under the direction of
the camp administrators on September 12, 1942, within two months of thecamp’s opening.36 The paper was issued two or three times a week. The firstseven issues had only English sections, but the Japanese section was added

74    Masumi Izumi

on October 7. The GNC continued as a bilingual newspaper with a sevenpage English section and a three-page Japanese section until the last issue
was printed on September 28, 1945. It carried administrative notices, event
information and reports, announcements from churches and otherassociations, advertisements for job recruitment inside and outside the camp,
sports and entertainment news, and letters to the editor.
The Japanese section carried literary works and collections of poems fromtime to time. The English section carried opinion columns, while theJapanese section carried, in addition to frequent short opinion sections,serial columns, such as Fujin no Sekai, authored by one person andcontinued for a limited period of time. Fujin no Sekai was the first of suchserial columns, which started on December 5, 1942. Fourteen articles under
this title was published throughout the period of four months. The lastcolumn appeared on March 13, 1943, followed by a new regular column Pen
no Shizuku (Ink drop), which started on March 16.
Reading Fujin no Sekai, one cannot help but notice the lightness of the
topics and the cheerful language the author uses (table 1). The text is
consistently uplifting. The list of article titles includes such words as“friendship,” “appreciation,” “youth,” “dreams,” and “spring.” Thenewspaper column also encouraged appreciation for everything that could
induce positive feelings.
Before evaluating the column, we need to note that the residents at Gila
River, like those in all the other camps, were experiencing tremendous
hardship and stress in late 1942 because of the crude living conditions,shortage and poor quality of food, and degeneration of morale as well associal stability. Tensions between different factions intensified, as the
majority of incarcerees disdained the Nisei leaders, especially members of
the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), for being “toocollaborative” with the administration.37 On November 19, a six-day strike
was organized in Poston to protest the arrest of two people who werecharged with beating up an “informer,” or “inu,” meaning a dog or traitor.38
On December 6 in Manzanar, people gathered in protest after Harry Ueno
was arrested for suspected assault on the JACL leader Fred Tayama.39 Two
incarcerees were killed when the army fired into the crowd. Right between
these two incidents, on November 30, a Kibei man named Takeo Tada wasbeaten up in Gila River, which led to the arrest of Chota Horikane, a leaderof an Issei vigilante organization.40 The arrest generated a wide-spread
protest throughout the camp. The column Fujin no Sekai was started during
this tumultuous period.

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Table 1. Titles of the column Fujin no Sekai（婦人の世界）
Date

Title

English Translation
Friendship among womenDec. 5, 1942

女の友情 “Onna no yujou”

Dec. 9, 1942

メスへの感謝 “Mesu e no kansha” Appreciation for the mess hall workers

Dec. 17, 1942

ほくろ “Hokuro”

A mole on the faceDec. 19, 1942

心の若さ “Kokoro no wakasa”

Youthful heart

Dec. 24, 1942

夢 “Yume”

DreamsDec. 27, 1942

遊戯する人 “Yugi suru hito”

Playful minds

Dec. 29, 1942

本然の姿 “Honnen no sugata”

One’s true natureJan. 1, 1943

新春の訪れ “Shinshun no otozure” Arrival of the new year

Jan. 12, 1943

花の魅力 “Hana no miryoku”

Charm of flowers

Jan. 16, 1943

追憶の尊さ “Tuioku no toutosa”

Precious memories

Jan. 19, 1943

春のささやき “Haru no sasayaki”

Whispers of spring

Jan. 21, 1943

捨てる一葉 “Suteru hitoha”

Discarding a superfluous leaf

Jan. 23, 1943

書物 “Shomotsu”

Books

Jan. 25, 1943

味の醍醐味 “Aji no daigomi”

Delicious mealJan. 28, 1943

No title

Content: Women’s emotions

Jan. 30, 1943

働く気持 “Hataraku kimochi”

Work spirit

Feb. 2, 1943

講演を聴く “Kouen o kiku”

Attending public lectures

Feb. 6, 1943

應と否と “Ou to ina to”

Yes and noFeb. 11, 1943

医者への感謝 “Isha e no kansha”

Appreciation for the doctors

Feb. 13, 1943

婦人會 “Fujin-kai”

Women’s association

Feb. 16, 1943

手紙の迫力 “Tegami no hakuryoku” Power of a letter

Feb. 18, 1943

優しい先輩 “Yasashi sempai”

A kind senpai

Feb. 20, 1943

蚊の恐怖 “Ka no kyoufu”

Fear of mosquitoes

Feb. 23, 1943

婦人解放 “Fujin kaihou”

Women’s liberation

Feb. 25, 1943

婦人と読書 “Fujin to dokusho”

Women and reading

Feb. 27, 1943

比良になじむ “Hira ni najimu”

Adjusting to Gila

March 2, 1943 春の味覚 “Haru no mikaku”

The taste of spring

March 4, 1943 お雛祭 “O-hinamatsuri”

Girl’s Day celebration

March 6, 1943 春雨 “Harusame”

Spring rain

March 8, 1943 還境を怖る “Kankyou o soru”

Concerns about the environment

March 11, 1943 知己の感 “Chiki no kan”

The feeling of friendship

March 13, 1943 隣人愛 “Rinjin ai”

Love your neighbor

76    Masumi Izumi

Despite the lightness of the topics discussed in the column, the texts in
Fujin no Sekai show that the author clearly recognized the grim reality of thedesert prison camp. The essay “Mesu e no kansha (Appreciation for the messhall workers),” which appeared on December 9, for example, insists that
“we Japanese are now thrown into a crucible. We are enduring together acommon hardship, and we are serving each other well. We should not forget
our appreciation for those working in the mess halls.”41 In late November,
the Gila River community had just celebrated its first substantial vegetable
harvest.42 The food situation was only starting to improve. The GNC carried
articles about meat rationing and shortage of other foods, such as rice, while
repeatedly calling for workers for the farms.43 Other articles reported on theserious shortage of farm appliances needed for storing and shipping
vegetables that would soon be ready for harvest.44 Clothing was also in short
supply because of an administrative delay in the allowance.45 It was not until
mid-February that partitions were installed in women’s latrines.46
Considering the incarcerees’ dire situation with food, clothing, and otherbasic needs, we can realize that the column was not used for moral
preaching but a desperate call for resilience.
Similarly, the article “Isha e no kansha (Appreciation for the doctors)”quotes a doctor who lamented that his former patients did not even greet
him after recovering from illness.47 The author reminds the readers that thedoctors lacked adequate medical equipment and are working on the“evacuee” wage scale ($19 a month for professionals, $16 for regular
workers), and urged patients to be thankful for the medical services
provided by the devoted doctors and medical staff, who worked for very
little material compensation.
In the essay titled “Hataraku kimochi (Work spirit),” the author
acknowledges the exploitative nature of camp labor:
It looks like the Nisei hold the idea that they should demand rewards
for everything they do. In contrast, the Issei take pride in showing
willingness to serve and sacrifice themselves for the good of the world
and for others. Let me take the example of the mess hall service. The
mess hall service generates a reward of sixteen dollars. This work
becomes absurd when we think we are only getting sixteen dollars forthe work, and naturally we do not feel heartened to do anything.
However, if we can think of what we are doing as a service for our own
brothers and sisters, who have been placed under the century’s greatest
hardship and who are struggling to endure such a living standard, such

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hard labor then becomes a pleasure.48
The essay attributes the incarcerees’ varied reactions to the low-wagelabor to generational traits. It is easy to interpret this text as a typical Issei
reaction—submission to injustice and compliance with the exploitative
camp labor policies. To get a more nuanced understanding, however, it
might be helpful to consider the meaning of gaman again in relation to thistext. Shimabukuro points out that, in addition to meaning “resilience,”
gaman “is an ethos implicitly concerned with collectivity.”49 Gaman iscalled forth by the awareness that one needs to control one’s emotions andnot give in to frustration and grievances, because making a commotion
would only exacerbate the suffering of others. Contrary to the hegemonic
narrative about the Issei, I would like to emphasize that this awarenessshould not be attributed to a “natural” cultural trait that the Japanese are“group oriented.” Rather, the author of Fujin no Sekai was aware, as weremany other Nikkei (Japanese Americans), that the deterioration of morale ofeven a few people could erode the social fabric of the entire campcommunity, which had no choice but to face their challenge collectively.
After all, Japanese Americans in Gila River were rounded up, lumped
together, and locked up in an isolated desert camp.
It was an interesting historical contingency that a female editor took on
the authorship of Gila River’s first serial newspaper column, which served
as an emotional tranquilizer for the impounded community. As much as
Fujin no Sekai urged endurance from the readers, it tried to do so by
alleviating pain. By writing essays on the “whispers of spring,” “charms offlowers,” “playful minds,” and “spring rain,” the author tried to uplift thespirit of all the Japanese speakers in the camp, telling people to look at thebright side of their surroundings. In an article on the Girl’s Day celebration,
the author writes about the full set of fine hand-made hina dolls placed on atiered alter covered with a red carpet, brightening up the shabby barrack
mess hall.50 Impressed with the beauty of the scene, she “almost welled up intears.”51 Although the articles in Fujin no Sekai appear to be a collection of
personal thoughts on daily events in the camp life, they illuminate the role ofwomen who collectively worked to uplift people’s morale.
In the camps, pleasure served an important role in helping people endure
hardships. Jane Dusselier, who studied arts and crafts made by theincarcerees, argues that the artistic activities “were not frivolous but
encompassed political possibilities,” which prompts “a reconsideration of
everyday objects as critical to physical, mental, and emotional survival.”52

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Connie Chiang has pointed out that Japanese American incarcerees, after
overcoming initial bewilderment, “soon embraced opportunities to venture
outdoors and gained an appreciation of their new surroundings throughhiking, camping, picnicking and fishing, both within camp boundaries andoutside barbed wire.”53 Minako Waseda has analyzed how Japanese music
and traditional theater performances were enjoyed by the incarcerees andhow these were instrumental in culturally connecting the first and second
generations.54 Waseda writes that, even in 2014, she was told by another
scholar that recreational activities in the camps was “a taboo area” of study
because “they might cause the misunderstanding that camp life was not sobad.”55 Now that there is a general consensus, even in mainstream culture,that the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II was
unequivocally unjustifiable, the need for policing what could be said about
the historical episode has faded. Instead of omitting such studies from thecollective historical memory, we need to contextualize the pleasure andhappiness that incarcerees pursued in captivity alongside the community andindividual struggles for survival.
Fujin no Sekai shows how the Issei in Gila River refused to be
demoralized by their incarceration in a desolate desert camp. Memories of
all the fun things they did in the camp—hikings, sports, engeikai (talentshows), music, dance, and art—need not be suppressed, because in no way
does their existence justify the gross civil rights injustice inflicted on
incarcerees. It shows that Japanese Americans in the face of adversity still
strived to maintain normality and positive attitudes toward life. Fujin no
Sekai illuminates that a major task of moral uplift was placed in the“women’s world,” which ensured community and individual survival
through the uprooting.
A Progressive Issei Woman
Fujin no Sekai includes several articles on human relationships among
women (table 1). The author tends to provide stereotypical views, such as
women being overly emotional and sensitive to trivial matters, and assigns
emotional labor such as giving and receiving affection to women.56 The text
occasionally betrays her slightly antifeminist stance in such utterances as “I
am tired of ‘female leader’ figures who coldly preach on ethics or those who
are fixed on rigid theories.”57 At the same time, many of her articles promotewomen’s participation in social events, such as public lectures, adult classes,
and women’s associations. The author also encourages women to read andGila River Concentration Camp and the Historical Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration  

79

learn. One essay reports on a public lecture she enjoyed, and she lamentsthat she saw very few women in the audience. “Now that women are freed
from housework, we should participate in as many lectures and read as
many books to obtain knowledge about history and society,” she writes.58
The author also encourages women to retain free and “playful” minds. One
article talks about women’s liberation (fujin kaihou). The author did not
believe that women’s liberation equals “masculinization of women” butrather the active involvement of women in society as “constructive
participants.”59
Interestingly, there are no references to children in Fujin no Sekai. On theGirl’s Day celebration, she writes how happy the fine dolls and ornaments
made her and how much she appreciated the efforts of those women who
made them, but she does not mention how those women made the dolls toplease the children in the camp or how the children reacted to the dolls. In
the February 8 article titled “Kankyou o Osoru (Concerns about theenvironment),” she discusses the importance of maintaining cultural
standards by finding unique beauty in the “primitive camp life far awayfrom cultural centers” in order to avoid demoralization.60
Conventional wisdom would assume that women would have been
concerned about the negative effects of the camp environment on youths.
Indeed, juvenile delinquency and gang activities were among the mostserious social problems discussed in the newspaper.61 In the hegemonic
historical narratives, the Issei women, not only in camps but in general, arerepresented by their family relationships, especially motherhood.62 Contrary
to this view, the column Fujin no Sekai represents women as individuals.
The column’s author contends that women need to be happy themselves andmust strive to be cultured as individuals. She declares that women should
fulfill their roles as constructive social participants for the maintenance ofthe camp community’s well-being. This suggests that the author was a“liberated” progressive woman for her time.
So, who authored this column? It was Hatsuye Egami, a Tokyo-bornwoman who migrated to the United States in 1921 at the age of nineteenwith the support of her uncle who was a Baptist minister in the UnitedStates.63 She was married in Japan, and at the time of the uprooting, she
lived in Pasadena, California, and had four children. She taught music in
Pasadena and had been involved in the editing of Rafu Shimpo, a Los
Angeles newspaper. The diary she kept in the Tulare Assembly Center waslater translated into English and published under the title, The Evacuation
Diary of Hatsuye Egami (1995).

80    Masumi Izumi

Egami was an intellectual urban Issei and daughter of a Baptist minister.
After she migrated to the United States, she became connected to the Issei
artists and Japanese literary community in Southern California. One of thearticles in Fujin no Sekai mentions her meeting with an old friend, Uraji
Kamiyama.64 Kamiyama—her real name was Chie Mita, and she had otherpseudonyms: Uraji Yamakawa, Ura Mita, and Mrs. Sojin—was a Japanese
actress who migrated to California in 1919. Uraji and her husband Sojin
Kamiyama were involved in the left-leaning modern Western-style theater(shingeki) movement and led a bohemian life as was popular in the Taishoera (1912–26).65 Their son, Heihachi Kamiyama, was an active member ofthe Hokubei Shijin Kyokai (association of North American poets), the firstinter-regional Japanese literary association in the United States. He
associated with Japanese American leftists, such as Karl Yoneda, in the
1930s and produced a considerable amount of proletarian poetry.66 Hokubei
Shijin Kyokai published a literary journal, Shukaku (harvest), starting inNovember 1936.67 Hatsuye Egami was on the editorial board of its sixth
issue, the last issue of this journal, published in June 1939.68
Because Hokubei Shijin Kyokai included literary figures with views acrossthe political spectrum, Shukaku contained poems, short novels, reviews, andessays ranging from proletarian literature to pro-Imperial Japan essays. It is
certain, however, that the editorial board members included many
progressive Issei, Nisei, and Kibei.69 The sixth issue of Shukaku was edited
by four women: Egami, Tsuyuko Matsuda, Mitsuko Hayashida, and Shizue
Ihara.70 Egami was a close friend of Tsuyuko Matsuda, a socially conscious
feminist poet. Egami’s short fiction that appears in this issue depicts aromantic affection felt by an Issei woman for the nephew of her much older
Issei husband.71 The heroine is the breadwinner of her family, while her
gentle, elderly husband is unemployed and does all the household chores.
Her loneliness and adulterous desire are skillfully expressed through thedescription of her body while bathing. Iwao Yamamoto, one of the pioneer
Japanese scholars of Japanese American literature, names this piece among
the best fictional works compiled in the six volumes of Shukaku.72
With such a background as a literary activist, Egami joined the editorial
staff of the Gila News Courier and took charge of the art and literaturesections.73 As Egami encouraged in her column, the Issei women in Gila
River became extremely active. They organized fujin kai (women’s
associations), established a PTA, created arts and crafts for exhibits, and sent
poems to haiku competitions. Adult education classes grew rapidly from anenrollment of 300 with five subjects in early October to over 1,900 with

Gila River Concentration Camp and the Historical Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration  

81

twenty subjects by the end of 1942.74 Egami’s column, published in adesolate desert camp, was not a voice in the wilderness but inspirited thesouls of Japanese-speaking incarcerees.
Conclusion
In this article I have examined how research findings on JapaneseAmerican experiences at the Gila River War Relocation Center compel us tomodify the conventional historical memories of Japanese American wartime
mass incarceration. The Issei men and women’s contributions to theconstruction and improvement of the camp’s material and social
infrastructure underline the importance of studying understudied camps. It isnecessary to examine underused historical materials, such as the Japaneselanguage sections of camp newspapers, to learn more about the activities of
the Issei and Kibei.
Studying the “least oppressive” concentration camp helps us untangle themultilayered pains that Japanese American incarcerees went through during
World War II. Japanese Americans suffered both from ideological pain andphysical hardships. The Nisei’s exclusion from the discursive American
citizenry caused psychological trauma both for the Nisei and their parents,
who had long been striving to gain equal rights with other American
citizens. Physical maltreatment and poor living conditions distressed all
incarcerees in the camps. The resistance against incarceration arose bothfrom ideological resentment against the violation of civil rights and from thephysical and material hardships the incarcerees had to endure. Unlike in Gila
River, in many camps Japanese Americans were conflated into an imagined“security threat,” in which racially prejudiced administrators perceived any
resistance as a manifestation of “disloyalty.” The schism generated among
the incarcerees through the divisive “loyalty questions” left irreparable scars
on the Japanese American community. The resulting reliance on the
discourses of “loyalty” and “citizenship” in constructing postwar historicalmemories of wartime experiences led to the self-policing of representation
within the Japanese American community—only the experiences of“American citizens of Japanese ancestry” could be narrated, and only thoseproven “loyal” were entitled to speak—until the beginning of this century.
By focusing on the materiality of incarceration experiences at Gila River,combined with the usage of Japanese-language sources, I have shed light on
Issei wartime activities that have heretofore been silenced in historicalnarratives of the camps. By setting aside the citizenship issue and looking at

82    Masumi Izumi

the least oppressive camp, I was able to expand the lens through which we
can look at Japanese American wartime incarceration. Moreover, I haveshown that the excavation of Issei writings in camp connects JapaneseAmerican history to Japanese history. There have been studies on prewar
Japanese American agricultural and fishing communities, and new work on
prewar urban Issei communities has become available in English, yet few ofthese authors extend their research into the war period.75 This article
connects the prewar expatriate artist and activist communities to Issei
writing in camps. This further expands the scope of studies on JapaneseAmerican incarceration. More works are needed that connect Issei activisms
before, during, and after World War II.
Notes
This article was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science, Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (Kakenhi) number 24520847.
1
Karen Leong and Myla Vicenti Carpio, “Carceral Subjugations: Gila River IndianCommunity and Incarceration of Japanese Americans on Its Lands,” Amerasia Journal 42,
no. 1 (2016): 104.
2
Ibid., 107.
3
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the US government removed the entire ethnic
Japanese population, regardless of their nationality, from the “defense” zone, which was
designed to be anywhere within one hundred miles from the Pacific Coast. Approximately
120,000 Japanese Americans were excluded from the West Coast, detained at first in
temporary “assembly centers” within the defense zone, and later shipped to the camps known
as “war relocation centers” in the inland. The exclusion, relocation, and incarceration ofJapanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were US citizens, has been commonly called “theinternment.” Legally speaking, however, only the confinement of Japanese nationals in the
Department of Justice detention centers can be described as internment, which indicateswartime detention of enemy aliens. Thus, in this article, I use the term “incarceration” whenreferring to the confinement of US citizens of Japanese ancestry: National JACL Power ofWords II Committee, Power of Words Handbook: A Guide to Language about JapaneseAmericans in World War II (San Francisco: Japanese American Citizens League, April 27,2013), 11, 13; https://jacl.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Power-of-Words-Rev.Term.-Handbook.pdf, accessed January 20, 2018.
4
For geographic and archaeological information on the various sites of Japanese American
wartime detention, see Jeffery F. Burton, Mary M. Farrell, Florence B. Lord, and Richard W.
Lord, Confinement and Ethnicity: An Overview of World War II Japanese American
Relocation Sites (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002).
5
The camp at Tule Lake, California, had the largest peak population of 18,789 in December
1944, but this was after it was turned into a segregation center, where the so-called disloyal
population was transferred from all other camps. The two WRA camps in Arizona were
exceeded in population only by the cities of Phoenix and Tucson in 1942.
6
Manzanar, Poston, Tule Lake, and Heart Mountain are the best known camps, while fewer
works discuss other camps. John Howard, Concentration Camps on the Home Front:

Gila River Concentration Camp and the Historical Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration  

83

Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)
depicts the camps in Arkansas.
7
Immigrants from Japan were barred from US citizenship until 1952, making all the Issei
Japanese nationals during World War II. Studies on Nisei identity include: Jere Takahashi,
Nisei/Sansei: Shifting Japanese American Identities and Politics (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1997) and David K. Yoo, Growing Up Nisei: Race, Generation and Culture
among Japanese Americans of California, 1924–49 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
2000). An example of records of Issei and Kibei experiences in the camps is Louis Fiset,
Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple (Seattle: Universityof Washington Press, 1997). In the past several years, some documentary films have beenreleased that depict the stories of the citizenship renunciants. See Emery Clay III, Stephen
Holsapple, and Satsuki Ina, directors, From a Silk Cocoon (DVD, CreateSpace, 2005); andLinda Hattendorf, director, Cats of Mirikitani (DVD, Arthouse Films, 2006).
8
Jean Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1973); Yoshiko Uchida, Journey to Topaz: A Story of the JapaneseAmerican Evacuation (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971). Some earlier analyses of
the Tule Lake citizenship renunciants were published by Japanese scholars such as Teruko
Kumei, “Skeleton in the Closet: The Japanese American Hokoku Seinen-dan and Their‘Disloyal’ Activities at the Tule Lake Segregation Center during World War II,” Japanese
Journal of American Studies 7 (1996): 67–102. More recent studies include Barbara Takei
and Judy Tachibana, Tule Lake Revisited, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Tule Lake Committee,2012); Martha Nakagawa, “Renunciants: Bill Nishimura and Tad Yamakido,” Journal of the
Shaw History Library 19 (2005): 137–59; and Hiroshi Kashiwagi, Swimming in theAmerican: A Memoir and Selected Writings (San Mateo, CA: Asian American Curriculum
Project, 2003).
9
Brian Hayashi points out that, in general, immigrant communities maintain in their sharedsentiments cultural and oftentimes political affiliations with their home countries, andJapanese Americans in the camps were no exception. Brian Masaru Hayashi, Democratizing
the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2004). Also see, John Okada, No-No Boy (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1976).
Emiko Omori depicted the long-lasting damage the loyalty questionnaire had on JapaneseAmerican families in her documentary film Rabbit in the Moon (DVD, Wabi-Sabi, 1999).
10
Academic works that focus on Gila River include: Arthur A. Hansen, “Cultural Politics in
the Gila River Relocation Center, 1942–1943,” Arizona and the West 27, no. 4 (1985): 327–
62; and Arthur A. Hansen, “The Evacuation and Resettlement Study at the Gila River
Relocation Center, 1942–1944,” Journal of the West 38, no. 2 (1999): 45–55. Personalaccounts of Gila River camp experiences have remained obscure. See Kenneth A. Tashiro,“Wase Time!”: A Teen’s Memoir of Gila River Internment Camp (Bloomington, IN:
Authorhouse, 2005). In 2016, a novel by former Gila River incarceree Gene Oishi received
the Best Book of the Year in Prose award from the Association for Asian American Studies.
Gene Oishi, Fox Drum Bebop (Los Angeles: Kaya Press, 2014). Bill Staples, Jr., Kenichi
Zenimura: Japanese American Baseball Pioneer (New York: McFarland, 2011) describes thelife of Kenichi Zenimura, an Issei star baseball player who spent his war years at Gila River,where he built a magnificent baseball field. Rick Noguchi, ed., Transforming Barbed Wire:
The Incarceration of Japanese Americans in Arizona during World War II (Phoenix: Arizona
Humanities Council, 1997) includes some articles on Gila River.
11
Yasuko I. Takezawa, Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Alice Yang Murray, Historical Memories of theJapanese American Internment and the Struggle for Redress (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2008).

84    Masumi Izumi
12
William Wei, The Asian American Movement (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,
1993), 21. On the Yellow Power movement, also see, Daryl J. Maeda, Chains of Babylon:
The Rise of Asian America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
13
In 1988, Congress issued a formal apology and agreed to compensate each surviving
Japanese American incarceree $20,000. The Redress settlement was part of the Civil
Liberties Act signed by President Ronald Reagan. In 1987, one year before the Redress
settlement, the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of American History opened A More
Perfect Union: Japanese Americans and the US Constitution, an exhibition on the JapaneseAmerican wartime incarceration and the Nisei soldiers who served in the US military. The
exhibition continued until 2004, when it was replaced by a permanent online exhibit stillavailable at the NMAH website; http://amhistory.si.edu/perfectunion/non-flash/index.html,
accessed January 20, 2018.
14
In Japan, scholars had been doing research on Japanese Americans since the 1970s, but it
was not until 1991 that the Japanese Association for Migration Studies (Nihon Imin Gakkai)
was founded as the first national academic association on migration studies. Among USbased scholars, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi offers an insider view of the intricate Issei-Nisei
relationships seen in the camp records created by Richard Nishimoto, a bilingual andbicultural field researcher of the Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study. Richard S.
Nishimoto, with contextual essays by editor Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, Inside an American
Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at Poston, Arizona (Tucson: Universityof Arizona Press, 1995).
15
Brian Niiya, ed., Encyclopedia of Japanese American History: An A-to-Z Reference from
1868 to the Present, updated edition (New York: Checkmark Books, 2001), 175.
16
Gila River is located in a desert, and it is impossible to survive if one attempts to escapefrom the camp on foot. In fact, one old man with a mental disability went missing from thecamp, and he was assumed to have died in the desert even though his body was never found.
17
Niiya, Encyclopedia of Japanese American History, 175.
18
Hisaye Yamamoto, quoted in King-Kok Cheung, Articulate Silences: Hisaye Yamamoto,
Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), 31.
19
Joy Kogawa, Obasan (New York: Penguin Books, 1983), 245.
20
Mira Shimabukuro, “‘Me Inwardly, before I Dared,’: Japanese Americans Writing-toGaman,” College English 73, no. 6 (2011): 650.
21
Ibid., 650–51.
22
Ibid., 656.
23
Masumi Izumi, “Media to Shite no Sotsugyo Arubamu: Nikkei Amerikajin Kyousei
Shuyousho ni okeru Koukou Seikatsu no Hyoushou Bunseki [High school yearbooks as a
medium of representation: Japanese American student lives in the Gila River War Relocation
Center],” in Media: Imin o Tsunagu, Imin ga Tsunagu [Ethnic media: Connecting immigrants,
immigrants networking] , ed. Norifumi Kawahara and Yoshitaka Hibi (Tokyo: Cross Culture
Shuppan, 2016), 13–38.
24
William F. Miller, Gila River Project, Community Management Division, Education
Section, “Educational Program, 1942–1945, Final Report,” RG 210, Records of the War
Relocation Authority, Final Report of the Gila River Relocation Center, National Archives(microfilm available at the University of Arizona Library), hereafter “Educational Program
Final Report,” 40.
25
The Parent-Teacher Association affiliated with the National Congress of Parents andTeachers at Gila River was organized during the first year of camp operation. For the three
years of school operation (1942–43, 1943–44, 1943–45), the average membership in the PTA
was nine hundred. As the total enrollment in Gila River’s two high schools was around 1,900
for the 1942–43 session, around 1,500 for the 1943–44 session, and around 1,400 for theGila River Concentration Camp and the Historical Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration  85

1944–45 session, it can be said that a strong majority of parents were involved in theirchildren’s schools. Ibid. 39.
26
Ibid., 14.
27
Toyoko Toppata, “My Years in School at Gila,” in “Educational Program Final Report,”
appendix, 57–58.
28
Masumi Izumi, “Hira Ribaa Kyousei Shuyousho no Nougyou Katsudou ni Miru Nikkei
Amerikajin no Seizon Senryaku: Senjichu no Issei no Katsudou Saikou ni Mukete[Agriculture at the Gila River concentration camp: Toward a re-evaluation of the Issei’s
wartime survival strategies],” Imin Kenkyu Nempo [Annual review of migration studies] 22(2016): 3–21.
29
It was estimated that the total vegetable produce of the fiscal year 1943 would have beenover $320,000 in market value. R. S. Davidson, “Final Project Report, Operations Division,
Agriculture Section, Gila River Project,” RG 210, Records of the War Relocation Authority,
Final Report of the Gila River Relocation Center (National Archives, 1946, microfilm
accessible at the University of Arizona Library, 7.
30Leong and Carpio, “Carceral Subjugations,” 107–12.
31
Ibid., 114.
32
Connie Y. Chiang describes the labor conflicts in the Topaz and Minidoka camps, in which
the incarcerees refused to work on water pipelines and stove-tending duties because they
considered that it was the responsibility of the WRA to fulfill its mandate to provide adequate
facilities. Connie Y. Chiang, “Imprisoned Nature: Toward an Environmental History of theWorld War II Japanese American Incarceration,” Environmental History 15, no. 2 (2010):
251–56.
33
Robert F. Spencer, “Gila Reports, 1942–43,” vol. 1, Charles Kikuchi Papers, Collection
1259, box 61, file: November 2, 1942, report no. 2-A, Special Collections, Charles E. Young
Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles, 70.
34
Ibid., 73.
35
In Japan, parents often ask for “gaman” from children and tell them “shikataganai” whenchildren complain about something that cannot be helped. The terms are used in relation todaily inconveniences as well as in the face of serious hardships.
36
All copies of the Gila News Courier can be seen in the Densho Digital Repository, http://
ddr.densho.org/ddr-densho-141/, accessed September 7, 2017.
37
Many of the JACL leaders were college educated, Christian or secular in religious
convictions, and had urban backgrounds. Lon Kurashige, “Resistance, Collaboration, andManzanar Protest,” Pacific Historical Review 70, no. 3 (2001): 401. They believed that it wasnecessary to deny cultural as well as political affiliations with Japan to prove JapaneseAmericans’ loyalty to the United States. The JACL tried to act as the sole representative of
the incarcerated Japanese Americans and actively silenced the incarcerees concerning
grievances and hampered their communication with the administration through otherchannels.
38
Alexander H. Leighton, The Governing of Men: General Principles andRecommendations Based on Experience at a Japanese Relocation Camp (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1946).
39
Gary Y. Okihiro, “Japanese Resistance in America’s Concentration Camps: A Reevaluation,” Amerasia Journal 2, no. 1 (1973): 20–34.
40
Hansen, “Cultural Politics in the Gila River Relocation Center,” 327–62.
41
Hatsuye Egami, “Mesu e no kansha,” GNC, December 9, 1942, Japanese Section, 1.
42“Farm Observes Local Harvest,” GNC, November 25, 1942, English Section, 2; “Butte’s
Gigantic Harvest Day Procession Starts 10:30 o’clock,” GNC, November 25, 1942, English
Section, 6.

86    Masumi Izumi
43

1.

“National Meat Rationing Hits Gila Colony,” GNC, December 2, 1942, English Section,“Shortages Sabotage Vegetable Crop,” GNC, December 2, 1942, English Section, 3.
“Clothing Allowance: Canal Gets July, Aug., Cash Today,” GNC, December 9, 1942,
English Section, 1.
46“Women’s Latrines to be Paneled,” GNC, February 13, 1943, English Section, 1.
47
Hatsuye Egami, “Isha e no kansha,” GNC, February 11, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
48
Hatsuye Egami, “Hataraku kimochi,” GNC, January 30, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
49
Shimabukuro, “Me Inwardly,” 652.
50
In Japan, hina dolls are displayed for a few weeks before the annual Girl’s Day celebration
on March 3. The dolls are dressed in Heian period court costumes, and the doll set depicts animperial couple with their servants, court ladies, musicians, and ministers.
51
Hatsuye Egami, “O-hinamatsuri,” GNC, March 4, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
52
Jane E. Dusselier, Artifacts of Loss: Crafting Survival in Japanese American
Concentration Camps (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 12–13.
53
Chiang, “Imprisoned Nature,” 245.
54
Minako Waseda, “Music in Japanese American Concentration Camps: The Film Hidden
Legacy and Its Impact on the Collective Memory,” Getuigen Tussen Geschiedenis en
Herinnering 124 (April 2017): 102–12.
55
Ibid., 109.
56
Hatsuye Egami, “Onna no yujou,” GNC, December 5, 1942, Japanese Section, 1; Hatsuye
Egami, Fujin no Sekai, essay with no title, GNC, January 28, 1943, Japanese Section, 1;
Hatsuye Egami, “Rinjin ai,” GNC, March 13, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
57
Hatsuye Egami, “Yasashii sempai,” GNC, February 18, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
58
Hatsuye Egami, “Kouen o kiku,” GNC, February 2, 1943, Japanese Section, 1. Also see,
Hatsuye Egami, “Fujin to dokusho,” GNC, February 25, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
59
Hatsuye Egami, “Fujin kaihou,” GNC, February 23, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
60
Hatsuye Egami, “Kankyou o osoru,” GNC, March 8, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
61
Satae Shinoda, “‘Wakoudo [Youths],” Nikkei America Bungaku Zasshi Shūsei [Anthologyof Japanese American literary journals] vol. 2 (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1997), 8.
62
Kogawa, Obasan. Also see Dennis M. Ogawa, Kodomo No Tame Ni/For the Sake of theChildren: The Japanese American Experience in Hawaii (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1980); Mei T. Nakano, Japanese American Women: Three Generations 1890–1990(Sebastopol, CA: Mina Press, 1990).
63
Claire Gorfinkel, ed., The Evacuation Diary of Hatsuye Egami (Pasadena, CA: Intentional
Productions, 1995). Egami’s brief biography appears on p.14 of the published diary.
64
Hatsuye Egami, “Yasashii sempai,” GNC, February 18, 1943, Japanese Section, 1.
65
Hikaru Hosoe, “Kamiyama Sojin Nempu Kou: Tanizaki Junichiro to no Kouyu o Chushin
ni [A short chronological history of the life of Sojin Kamiyama: His friendship with Junichiro
Tanizaki],” Konan Joshi Daigaku Kenkyu Kiyou 38 (2002): 45–57; 39 (2003): 11–54; 40(2004): 37–63; and 41 (2005): 39–49.
66
Karl Yoneda, a Kibei member of the Communist Party of the United States of America,
was a prominent member of this group.
67
Junko Kobayashi, “‘Bitter Sweet Home’: Celebration of Biculturalism in Japanese
Language Japanese American Literature, 1936–1952” (PhD. diss, University of Iowa, 2005),
21–66.
68
Iwao Yamamoto, “Maboroshi no Bungeishi, Shūkaku, kaidai [The mythical literary
journal, Shukaku, introduction],” in Nikkei America Bungaku Zasshi Shūsei [Anthology ofJapanese American literary journals] vol.1 (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1997), 13–14.
69
Mariko Mizuno, “1930 nendai no Nikkei Amerikajin no Bungaku Katsudou to ‘Sayoku44
45Gila River Concentration Camp and the Historical Memory of Japanese American Mass Incarceration  

87

teki’ Musubitsuki: Shukaku, Current Life, Doho, Hoka [Politically left networks among
Japanese American literary groups in the 1930s: An analysis of Shukaku, Current Life, andDoho],” in Media: Imin o Tsunagu, Imin ga Tsunagu [Ethnic media: Connecting immigrants,
immigrants networking], ed. Norifumi Kawahara and Yoshitaka Hibi (Tokyo: Cross Culture
Shuppan, 2016), 321–24.
70
Yamamoto, “Maboroshi,” 12.
71
Hatsuye Egami, “Shunshu [Spring melancholy],” Shukaku 6 (Los Angeles: Bungei
Renmei, 1939): 49, 52, repr. in Nikkei America Bungaku Zasshi Shūsei [Anthology ofJapanese American literary journals] vol. 1 (Tokyo: Fuji Shuppan, 1997).
72
Yamamoto, “Maboroshi,” 14; Izumi, “Media to Shite no Sotsugyo Arubamu,” 15.
73“Henshu dayori (From the editor’s office),” GNC, November 28, 1942, Japanese Section,
1.
74“New Semester, Adult Education Offers Personal Gain,” GNC, February 20, 1943,
English Section, 1.
75Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in JapaneseAmerica (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Yuko Konno, “Trans-Pacific Localism:
Emigration, Adaptation, and Nationalism among Japanese Immigrants in California, 1890–
1940” (PhD. diss., University of Southern California, 2012); Shelley Sang-Hee Lee,
Claiming the Oriental Gateway: Prewar Seattle and Japanese America (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2015); Kazuhiro Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes in the North AmericanWest, 1887–1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016).