Japanese Cultural Notions and Their Implications After the War and Beyond
Japanese Cultural Notions and Their Implications After the War and Beyond
Japanese Americans experienced a range of psychological effects due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the incarceration itself, and the decades of remnant trauma, discrimination, and socioeconomic hardship after the camps closed. The continuous uncertainty surrounding their safety and identity as Americans made the adversity never-ending.
Photos courtesy of Dorothea Lange
A Continuing Struggle
A Continuing Struggle
Around one-third of the Japanese Americans deemed “loyal” enough to leave the concentration camps by the end of 1944 were not allowed to return to the West Coast until January of 1945.
Because the struggle did not end with the end of the war for the survivors of the internment camps, neither did their dedication toward passive perseverance.
Most lacked the financial resources to actually return home. Before the incarceration, they had been forced to either sell or give away all of their possessions and could only take to camp what they could physically carry. With the closing of the camps, they faced a new grim reality of resuming their lives in potentially hostile environments with little resources. The survivors basically had to start over, slowly re-establishing their communities in new places or their old homes. Pre-war little Tokyos were gone, overtaken by other ethnic groups, and returning Japanese Americans faced competition for jobs and housing. The families who were relocated from their farms had mostly lost them and had to start over as farm laborers. Those who returned earlier to the coast were met with continuing anti-Japanese sentiment from those who opposed their return. Night riders shot at the homes of early arrivals, stores refused service to “Japs”, and discrimination made finding jobs and housing exponentially more difficult (JANM).
Gaman
for the Nisei meant staying silent, only mentioning the “good times”, and not acknowledging the magnitude of their loss. There were feelings of humiliation and self-blame; even though they had done nothing to warrant their imprisonment, the survivors often felt somehow that they were responsible for their years spent within fences.
Once again, many Japanese Americans found themselves in situations that required a strong ethos of gaman
in order to persevere, quieting their outward expression. Although post-incarceration responses did vary, virtually all survivors avoided discussing their wartime experience. The detachment and avoidance of trauma-related stimuli that could come from discussing those years have been seen as paralleling symptoms of posttraumatic stress (Densho). It was an extension of their desire to gaman, a group attempt to suppress unpleasant memories and feelings.
For Future Generations
As the memories of the internment camps remain relevant to the lives of so many Japanese Americans today, so do the implications of gaman
and the culture of survivance that may provide strength to any situation. A knowledge and understanding of gaman
is essential for the compassion we should feel toward the Issei and Nisei regarding their years spent in the camps. The Sansei generation grew up hearing their parents refer to “camp” in indirect and cryptic manners, experiencing their parents’ reluctance to fully discuss their internment experiences and sensed that what occurred was too painful to talk about. The disconnection also created holes in the Sansei’s own personal history and identity development, and many carried feelings of anger and sadness for their parents’ unspoken suffering (Densho). “Postmemory”, a term coined by Marianne Hirsch, describes the connection felt by subsequent generations to traumatic experiences that occurred before their births. The powerful memories of their predecessors are often passed down so purely to second generations that the resonating emotions seem as though they are their own. The formative events of the years during the war crucially informed the biographies and identities of all Japanese American family generations. Thus, gaman
will remain relevant for as long as the family members of internment camp survivors exist, as they will also have struggles to work through related to the camps. We must understand gaman
in order to understand the suffering of our families.
Advancing Gaman
Gaman
is not a term to be left in the past, solely associated with the survival of the Japanese American internment camps. Rather, gaman
should be taken with us into the future and developed into a more worldwide, applicable phenomenon. Although gaman
and its related cultural notions originated in Japanese culture, the meaning behind the word and its possible implications during times of tragedy do not stop there. Responding to and coping through an event such as the World War II incarceration is not a singularly Japanese experience. People of all heritages and backgrounds have endured suffering throughout history, and unfortunately, will continue to. Despite the racist rhetoric that continues to be prevalent, the possibility for courage always exists, and gaman
can remind us of that. Whether it is day-to-day struggles or large-scale devastation, these Japanese cultural convictions can be applied to any and all troubling experiences. The acknowledgement of the power of gaman
allows us to imagine the possibility for perseverance and beauty during such adversity; its meaning should be advanced into something transnational. Outside of hardships, gaman
allows us to pinpoint what we, non-survivors, “owe” to the survivors of such events. We are able to determine how to carry on their stories in an accurate way without appropriating their experiences. We can then use this knowledge and our empathy for the internment camp survivors to transform the memory into action and resistance in the future.
“He said while in town a few boys entered a restaurant to have a bite to eat. The first thing the waitress asked was 'Are you Japs?' When they replied 'yes' she turned her back on them and said they don't serve Japs.”
Letter from Louise Ogawa, 1942
Courtesy of the Japanese American National Museum
"The quiet courage of people who are put in the worst circumstances, and they find it in themselves to rise above it and make things that are truly beautiful."
Delphine Hirasuna, The Art of Gaman
Chambers, Tim. Anchor Editions. Anchor Editions, 2017, https://anchoreditions.com/blog/dorothea-lange-censored-photographs.
Accessed April 2019.
Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, California.
Densho. Densho: The Japanese American Legacy Project, 2017, https://densho.org/. Accessed Apr-May 2019.