The Art of Perseverance
Japanese Cultural Notions & Their Effects On The World War II Internment Camp Experience
The World War II Japanese American internment was defined by certain Japanese cultural convictions that aided the internees in their perseverance throughout. These values, known as gaman, shikataganai, and gambatte, framed the internee experience during and after the war, ultimately cultivating a spirit of strength, passive acceptance, and external silence, and becoming a rhetoric of survival for the internees. Within desolate circumstances and without adequate resources, the internees used art to cope and as a means of expression, ultimately resulting in impressive, extensive collections of physical archives from that period. Although the memory of the internment camp tragedy fades into the background of American history, the effects of concepts such as these and the traumatic memories of the incarceration continue to weigh heavily on Japanese Americans. The context and rhetoric surrounding historical mistakes such as this one are not mutually exclusive, and if we continue to look at them as so, they are likely to repeat. Thus, it is essential that we humanize the survivors of stories that are often left out of traditional historical discourses, and multimedia art is an effective mechanism in keeping stories such as these in our present discussions.
ABOUT
My grandparents, third generation Japanese Americans, were born in the Poston, Arizona internment camp. Like many other survivors of the internment camps, they and their family members went on with life reluctant to speak about their experiences. Naturally, I have always been curious about the details of their incarceration. This project, along with the Media Analyses, allowed me to investigate more about my own family history. Exploring the concept of gaman
has exponentially increased my understanding of my own family and even myself, as I can now empathize more with them and their hesitancy in reliving the experience.
This class has taught me the importance of traversing one’s own past in order to understand the present, so my desire to find out more about my family’s internment has only been strengthened over the past few months. With this project, I hope to continue my exploration in a successful way, so I can share valuable information with the rest of my family and even those outside of it.
BIG PICTURE
I have always felt as though there is a significant absence in traditional discussions of the humanizing side of stories such as the internment. Often times we are flooded with secondary sources that recount hard statistics and data, but these do not help us understand and feel compassion for the victims. In high school, I remember spending a total of two or three days learning about the Japanese Internment camps, and the section on this was very small in our textbook. We focused mostly on the context of World War II, the current world leaders, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the number of Japanese Americans interned. If not for the slight knowledge of my own family’s experiences and seeing firsthand the effects it had on my relatives, I would not have understood the capacity of the suffering and just how much the memory of the event continues to burden Japanese American families today. I was inspired by Delphine Hirasuna’s book, The Art of Gaman,
which provided insight into the humanizing side to the internment camp history by presenting images of some art that was created during those years. I quickly realized how important it is to use multi-media archives to connect generations, so neither information nor compassion are lost.
Photos courtesy of Dorothea Lange (1942)
Hirasuna, Delphine. The Art of Gaman: Arts and Crafts from the Japanese American Internment Camps 1942-1946. New York City, Crown
Publishing, 2005.