Nisei Radicals

Nisei Radicals
Author: Diane C. Fujino
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2020-12-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0295748273

Demanding liberation, advocating for the oppressed, and organizing for justice, siblings Mitsuye Yamada (1923–) and Michael Yasutake (1920–2001) rebelled against respectability and assimilation, charting their own paths for what it means to be Nisei. Raised in Seattle and then forcibly removed and detained in the Minidoka concentration camp, their early lives mirrored those of many second-generation Japanese Americans. Yasutake’s pacifism endured even with immense pressure to enlist during his confinement and in the years following World War II. His faith-based activism guided him in condemning imperialism and inequality, and he worked tirelessly to free political prisoners and defend human rights. Yamada became an internationally acclaimed feminist poet, professor, and activist who continues to speak out against racism and patriarchy. Weaving together the stories of two distinct but intrinsically connected political lives, Nisei Radicals examines the siblings’ half century of dedication to global movements, including multicultural feminism, Puerto Rican independence, Japanese American redress, Indigenous sovereignty, and more. From displacement and invisibility to insurgent mobilization, Yamada and Yasutake rejected stereotypes and fought to dismantle systems of injustice.

Legacy of Injustice

Legacy of Injustice
Author: Donna K. Nagata
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2013-06-29
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1489911189

At the age of 6, I discovered a jar of brightly colored shells under my grandmother's kitchen sink. When I inquired where they had come from, she did not answer. Instead, she told me in broken English, "Ask your mother. " My mother's response to the same question was, "Oh, I made them in camp. " "Was it fun?" I asked enthusiastically. "Not really," she replied. Her answer puzzled me. The shells were beautiful, and camp, as far as I knew, was a fun place where children roasted marshmallows and sang songs around the fire. Yet my mother's reaction did not seem happy. I was perplexed by this brief exchange, but I also sensed I should not ask more questions. As time went by, "camp" remained a vague, cryptic reference to some time in the past, the past of my parents, their friends, my grand parents, and my relatives. We never directly discussed it. It was not until high school that I began to understand the significance of the word, that camp referred to a World War II American concentration camp, not a summer camp. Much later I learned that the silence surrounding discus sions about this traumatic period of my parents' lives was a phenomenon characteristic not only of my family but also of most other Japanese American families after the war.

Redefining Japaneseness

Redefining Japaneseness
Author: Jane H. Yamashiro
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2017-01-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0813576393

There is a rich body of literature on the experience of Japanese immigrants in the United States, and there are also numerous accounts of the cultural dislocation felt by American expats in Japan. But what happens when Japanese Americans, born and raised in the United States, are the ones living abroad in Japan? Redefining Japaneseness chronicles how Japanese American migrants to Japan navigate and complicate the categories of Japanese and “foreigner.” Drawing from extensive interviews and fieldwork in the Tokyo area, Jane H. Yamashiro tracks the multiple ways these migrants strategically negotiate and interpret their daily interactions. Following a diverse group of subjects—some of only Japanese ancestry and others of mixed heritage, some fluent in Japanese and others struggling with the language, some from Hawaii and others from the US continent—her study reveals wide variations in how Japanese Americans perceive both Japaneseness and Americanness. Making an important contribution to both Asian American studies and scholarship on transnational migration, Redefining Japaneseness critically interrogates the common assumption that people of Japanese ancestry identify as members of a global diaspora. Furthermore, through its close examination of subjects who migrate from one highly-industrialized nation to another, it dramatically expands our picture of the migrant experience.

Japanese Americans

Japanese Americans
Author: Jonathan H. X. Lee
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2017-11-10
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

This book provides a comprehensive story of the complicated and rich story of the Japanese American experience-from immigration, to discrimination, to adaptation, achievement and contributions to the American mosaic. Japanese Americans: The History and Culture of a People highlights the enormous contributions of Japanese Americans in history, civil rights, politics, economic development, arts, literature, film, popular culture, sports, and religious landscapes. It not only provides context to important events in Japanese American history and in-depth information about the lives and backgrounds of well-known Japanese Americans, but also captures the essence of everyday life for Japanese Americans as they have adjusted their identities, established communities, and interacted with other ethnic groups. This innovative volume will become the standard resource for exploring why the Japanese came to the USA more than 130 years ago, where they settled, and what experiences played a role in forming the distinctive Japanese American identity.

Mothering, Education, and Ethnicity

Mothering, Education, and Ethnicity
Author: Susan Matoba Adler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317732944

This postmodern feminist study explores changes in Japanese American women's perspectives on child rearing, education, and ethnicity across three generations-Nisei (second), Sansei (third), and Yonsei (fourth). Shifts in socio-political and cultural milieu have influenced the construction of racial and ethnic identities; Nisei women survived internment before relocating to the midwest, Sansei women grew up in white suburban communities, while Yonsei women grew up in a culture increasingly attuned toward multiculturalism. In contrast to the historical focus on Japanese American communities in California and Hawaii, this study explores the transformation of ethnic culture in the midwest. Midwestern Japanese American women found themselves removed from large ethnic communities, and the development of their identities and culture provides valuable insight into the experience of a group of Asian minorities in the heartland. The book explores central issues in studies of Japanese culture, the Japanese sense of self, and the Japanese family, including amae (mother-child dependency relationship), gambare (perseverance), and gaman (endurance).

Nipponalia

Nipponalia
Author: Kyōto Gaikokugo Daigaku. Toshokan
Publisher:
Total Pages: 486
Release: 1984
Genre: Japan
ISBN:

The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000

The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000
Author: John M. Findlay
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 517
Release: 2023-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 1496235576

In the years between 1940 and 2000, the American Far West went from being a relative backwater of the United States to a considerably more developed, modern, and prosperous region—one capable of influencing not just the nation but the world. By the dawn of the twenty-first century, the population of the West had multiplied more than four times since 1940, and western states had transitioned from rural to urban, becoming the most urbanized section of the country. Massive investment, both private and public, in the western economy had produced regional prosperity, and the tourism industry had undergone massive expansion, altering the ways Americans identified with the West. In The Mobilized American West, 1940–2000, John M. Findlay presents a historical overview of the American West in its decades of modern development. During the years of U.S. mobilization for World War II and the Cold War, the West remained a significant, distinct region even as its development accelerated rapidly and, in many ways, it became better integrated into the rest of the country. By examining events and trends that occurred in the West, Findlay argues that a distinctive, region-wide political culture developed in the western states from a commitment to direct democracy, the role played by the federal government in owning and managing such a large amount of land, and the way different groups of westerners identified with and defined the region. While illustrating western distinctiveness, Findlay also aims to show how, in its sustaining mobilization for war, the region became tethered to the entire nation more than ever before, but on its own terms. Findlay presents an innovative approach to viewing the American West as a region distinctive of the United States, one that occasionally stood ahead of, at odds with, and even in defiance of the nation.