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What does it mean to be a Japanese American?

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What does it mean to be a Japanese American?

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Although this article was written in 1985, it's relevance in relation to Ichiro's fear of not being wholly one identity, and the fear that minority groups in America still face in 2018 is worth noting. The fear for Japanese Americans did not end after the War, and it did not end 40 years after.

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The commission concluded its work in the summer of 1983 with a list of five recommendations, including one that calls for a $1.5 billion fund to be used to provide a one-time compensatory payment of $20,000 to each of the approximately 60,000 remaining survivors of the internment. There was a bill in the last Congress - and action on a reintroduced version is expected in the current session - that would implement the commission's recommendations. Regardless of the fate of that bill, the commission hearings had a permanent impact on the Japanese community.

At the hearings, the usually reticent and undemonstrative nisei - second-generation Japanese-Americans - choked back tears or let them flow as they told their stories. Many of the spectators wept, too, as they listened, and it seemed as if a dam had burst and the community was at long last truly mourning its past.

The sansei - third-generation Japanese-Americans, most of whom were too young to have experienced the internment - were astonished. ''I never saw nisei act that way before,'' said a sansei afterward.

It was not what the witnesses said that was so remarkable, for most of them simply described the economic and physical hardships they endured. What was remarkable was that they spoke at all. I, too, spoke to the commission at a pre-hearing briefing seminar in June 1981. My throat and chest suddenly felt so constricted that I thought I was coming down with an attack of bronchitis. It took all the strength I had to get through my talk and to keep from breaking into tears.

The reasons for the severity of my reaction, and that of the other witnesses, long remained a mystery to me. Even in the spring of 1983, when I traveled around the country interviewing Japanese of all ages and in a wide variety of occupations, I had not yet plumbed the emotional depths of the internment experience. Nor did I start out with the intention of doing so. My plan was to flesh out what social scientists had been saying for the last two decades: that Japanese-Americans are an extraordinarily successful ethnic group.

As a group (there are about 700,000 Japanese in the United States), they are for the most part prosperous, well-educated and are rapidly joining the mainstream of middle-class life. But in the course of my interviews I began to notice in myself as well as in those I interviewed an intense discomfort with the ''model minority'' theme.

Chris Iijima, a teacher and politically oriented folk singer in New York, first articulated this discomfort for me in a rational way. Every stereotype, he said, has a ''flip side.'' Hard-working can become ruthless. Resourceful and ingenious can become diabolical. Friendly can become sneaky. Dedicated can become fanatical. What Iijima said struck a chord in me, for within my own lifetime I have seen the Japanese stereotype among the American public turn from negative to positive, and there are signs that as a result of economic competition with Japan it might flip again as more Americans view Japan as a threat to their livelihood.

Later, as I thought about Iijima's observation and my reaction to it, I began to understand that the reason for my near-breakdown before the Congressional commission was fear. I was speaking to a commission that represented in my mind the same type of officialdom that in 1942 could not see past the color of our skin and hair and the shape of our eyes and noses and concluded that we were actual or potential enemies.

IT WAS IN ARIZONA, AT the scene of my wartime internment, that I began to suspect that our discomfort with stereotypes, even positive ones, was rooted in fear. For the first time, I began to get a sense of how fear had ruled much of my life and perhaps the lives of most Japanese of my generation.

I was surprised by the ease with which I found the old campsite in the Gila River Indian Reservation, about 30 miles south of Phoenix. The barracks were gone, but the concrete foundation blocks, with twisted and rusted steel flanges clinging to them, were still there, as were the large slabs of concrete that once were the floors of the mess halls. From the top of a butte I had often climbed as a child, I could see a cattle farm and greening fields of wheat in the distance. None of this had existed when I first was here. At that time, there was nothing but desert wilderness as far as the eye could see. I felt high indignation; they were ruining my desert, encroaching on that precious isolation that had provided a measure of safety for me as a child. I realized then that I had not wanted to leave the camp. The desert, with its primitive desolation and extremes of weather, can be frightening at times, but it was not as frightening to me as the uncertainties and ambiguities of the world from which I had been ejected.

For the first nine years of my life my home had been Guadalupe, a small farming community in California's Santa Maria Valley. My father, who was a prominent farmer and civic leader in the Japanese community, was arrested early in the morning on Dec. 8, 1941, within 24 hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Though he was never charged with any crime, he thought he was going to be executed and so he wrote a letter of farewell to his family from a cell in the Santa Barbara County Jail.

Although my father and other community leaders arrested with him were not killed, many of the older Japanese feared they were being sent to extermination camps as the general ''evacuation'' began on the West Coast several months later. These fears I learned of much later, but I got a hint of them at the time from my mother's perpetually furrowed brow, from the sound of her crying at night and from her hair, which seemed to have turned gray overnight.

The roots of the fear went back to the late 19th century, when Japanese first started coming to this country in significant numbers. Like the Chinese before them, Japanese were subjected to intense racial hatred and vilification. Every effort was made to keep them from becoming woven into the social and economic fabric. They were not allowed naturalization privileges. Most Western states passed laws forbidding Asians from owning land. Antimiscegenation and other racially discriminatory laws were enacted. There was pressure put on Congress to stop further immigration from the Far East. In 1882, immigration from China was stopped, and in 1924 the ban was extended to Japan.

With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, racial animosity flared with renewed ferocity. It was a time when racism was not universally condemned as it is today publicly, and members of Congress and newspaper columnists and editors openly expressed racial hatred for the Japanese. Ultimately, in February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Government to remove 110,000 Japanese - 71,000 of them American citizens - from the West Coast and to place them in internment camps in the interior.

The first camp we were sent to was an ''assembly center'' built at the county fairgrounds in Tulare, Calif. My memories are of heat, dust and a pervasive, sickening smell of the tar paper with which the barracks were covered. There were two barbed-wire fences surrounding the camp. This was not simply an ''assembly center''; it was a prison. Soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolled the area between the two fences, and if you had any further doubts about what this camp was, there were guard towers along the perimeter, each equipped with a machine gun and searchlight.

Tulare was a hateful place, and I suppose anyone who spent time there would find his own reasons for finding it so. Mine never had any coherent pattern. First of all, my mother got sick and I had the feeling that she had deserted me. The food tasted tinny, maybe because it was served on metal trays. Juices from the canned vegetables, canned frankfurters and melting Jell-O flowed together to form a tepid, mildly sweet soup. The latrines were dirty and smelly and swarmed with flies. I still have unpleasant dreams about toilets filled and smeared with human feces. The barracks were crowded and noisy. Our family of six was assigned one small compartment that was barely large enough to hold our cots. The couple in the next compartment were always quarreling, and you could hear every word, even those they whispered.

During the day, I roamed with a band of children who resembled a pack of domestic dogs gone wild. We tried to make friends with the soldiers patrolling the camp, but they were sullen, even a little hostile, so we gave up. I don't know about the other children, but I never held it against the soldiers. Instead, I began to resent the Japanese they were guarding.

THE CAMP IN ARI-zona had no fence.

None was needed, situated as we were in the middle of the wilderness. I recall being inordinately afraid of rattlesnakes. I was afraid to go out of the barracks at night for fear that one would come slithering out of the crawl space under the building. It is only in recent years that I have begun to realize that the state of panic in which I lived during the first few months in Arizona was in some way connected with being a Japanese. At the weekly movie, an American war film played that ended with the sinking of a Japanese battleship. As American bombs began exploding on the deck of the ship, Japanese sailors began to panic and leap into the sea. The children and young adults in the audience began to giggle, and as the battleship sank they broke into cheers and applause. I cheered and applauded, too, knowing full well that our parents in the crowd were deeply pained that their children were turning against Japan and perhaps even against them. By late 1943, those who had pledged their loyalty to the United States were allowed to leave. Most of those who remained were children - or older folk who had been born in Japan and who, under the law, were not allowed to become citizens. They knitted, sculptured ironwood, grew morning glories, built rock gardens, or sat in the shade, fanning themselves and squinting against the heat. Life remained pretty much that way until the war ended and we were told to leave.

I recall the first words spoken to me when I met a former schoolmate upon our return to Guadalupe. He had been a friend before the war and I had often gone to his house to play. ''Hi, Norman,'' I said. ''Remember me? I'm Gene.'' Norman stared for some time. I waited for a smile of recognition that never came. Instead, he tilted his head back a little and asked with a sniff, '' All you Japs coming back?''

I eventually got over Norman's rude welcome. I graduated from high school, served in the Army, went to college, got married to a Swiss woman, moved to the East Coast and began a career as a newspaper reporter. I lived in a white neighborhood, had white friends and for long stretches of time would forget I was Japanese. I would feel extremely uncomfortable when inevitably I would be reminded of it.

For years I thought I was unusual in my reactions, but as I interviewed Japanese around the country, I discovered I was more typical than not of the generation of so-called nisei who grew up in the 1930's and 40's and were interned with their immigrant parents.

Dwight Chuman, a Los Angeles journalist and sansei, or third-generation Japanese, called the nisei ''confused young men who succeeded by selling their self-hatred and disappearing into the mainstream mentality.'' It is difficult to be lectured by a member of the younger generation, but I found myself agreeing with Chuman and with most of the sansei activists I interviewed.

Feelings of self-hatred and shame are well documented among victims of aggression and abuse, such as raped women, abused children and prisoners of war. But until recently, I had not thought of myself as a victim and had not allowed myself to feel fear or anger about the internment. As I interviewed Japanese around the country, I found others who were better able to articulate their feelings.

Bebe Toshiko Reschke, a psychiatric social worker at an adult outpatient clinic in California, was a child during the internment. She recalled that while in camp three military policemen came into her family's compartment to search for contraband.

''I had such a feeling of being violated,'' she said. ''I still have a problem with that, of trusting authority. . . . That anyone can have such control over you, and it can happen so fast.''

''When I read these stories dealing with Japan,'' she continued, referring to coverage of Japanese competition with the United States, ''I still get that emotional reaction. I think, 'Oh my God, the American public is turning against us again.' This time I'm not going. That's my line. This time I'm going to fight. I've joined the American Civil Liberties Union. That's my way of coping with my fears about what happened.''

Her comment is an indication of the anger suppressed by many nisei that is only now beginning to bubble to the surface. The more fortunate Japanese-Americans, in my view, are those who in one way or another expressed their anger at the time. Minoru Yasui, a lawyer and former executive director of the Denver Community Relations Commission, is one of them.

A trim elegant man with a lively twinkle in his eyes, Yasui does not strike one as a stubborn fighter. In fact, as a young lawyer in Portland, Ore., in 1942, he had no intention of turning himself into a test case. ''But we couldn't find anyone else to do it,'' he said. ''You were laying your career, your life, your record on the line. . . . It was scary. If you were convicted, you didn't know whether you were going to come out of prison alive.''

Despite his fear, Yasui refused to obey a curfew imposed on Japanese-Americans after the outbreak of World War II and refused to leave his home voluntarily when ordered to evacuate. He was arrested and served nine months in the Multnomah County Jail in Portland. Yasui appealed his conviction all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld it.

Yasui and others who fought for their constitutional rights in court were the exceptions. The Japanese American Citizens League, which assumed leadership within the Japanese community in 1942, discouraged even legal challenges and urged cooperation with the authorities. After an initial protest, league leaders accepted the position of the authorities that the evacuation of all Japanese from the West Coast was a military necessity. They cooperated with the authorities in getting Japanese into camps. Once they were there, the league lobbied Washington successfully to allow nisei to volunteer for the armed forces and to be subject to the draft. At one point, Mike Masaoka, a league leader, was reported to have urged the formation of an all-Japanese ''suicide battalion.'' Masaoka today says he does not recall having used the words ''suicide battalion,'' and goes on to say that even if he had he did not have in mind anything like the kamikaze units formed later in the war by the Japanese enemy.

Passions were whipped raw during the first months of internment. In some camps, Japanese American Citizens League leaders were attacked and beaten. But on the whole, the league position was supported. About 75 percent of Japanese-American males responded ''yes'' to a loyalty questionnaire that made them subject to the draft. Ultimately, more than 33,000 Japanese-Americans, including women, volunteered or were drafted into the armed forces during the war. In the Pacific, they served as interpreters and translators; and in Europe, the all-Japanese 100th Battalion and the 442d Regimental Combat Team were two of the most decorated and bloodied units of the war.

Thus, Japanese in the United States paid with blood the price of acceptance as Americans. But there are many of us who feel that we are continuing to pay a price.

Amy Iwasaki Mass, a nisei who is a clinical social worker and an instructor at Whittier College, in Whittier, Calif., has worked with many nisei as a therapist and concludes that the internment experience continues to be ''a real attack on our sense of well being and our self esteem.''

The reaction of many nisei, she said, was much like that of some hostages who start to identify with their captors. ''Identification with the aggressor makes us feel safer and stronger,'' she said.

She observed, as others have, that some nisei have shed their ethnic identity and have merged into the white mainstream. ''What is sacrificed is the individual's own self-acceptance,'' she said. ''It places an exaggerated emphasis on surface qualities, such as a pleasant nonoffensive manner, neat grooming and appearance, nice homes, nice cars and well behaved children.''

A further misfortune, she said, is that many nisei have passed on their basic insecurity to their sansei children.

SOME SANSEI, HOW-ever, have managed to break out of such a nisei mold. One of them is Steve Nakajo, a familiar figure on the streets of San Francisco's Japantown. His generous girth decked out in jeans and sneakers, he walks the streets with a swagger reminiscent of a sumo wrestler. He founded Kimochi Inc. to help the people of Japantown. One of the first projects was a movie escort service. Sansei, wearing yellow and black happi coats, walked or drove issei - first-generation immigrants - to and from Japanese movie theaters. This proved to be a popular service because of the old people's fear of street crime. Later, the Kimochi (which means ''feeling'') Lounge was opened, where issei could congregate, find reading materials, take up handicrafts and receive counseling for social services. A nutrition program was started as part of the federally financed meal program. Kimochi's crowning achievement, so far, is a $1.3 million, 20-bed facility for elderly Japanese. It was built entirely with private contributions, mostly from individuals, but with some corporate and foundation grants.

There are those who say that the internment benefited the Japanese by dispersing them throughout the country and making them more familiar and acceptable to other Americans. Such people ignore the damage done to the Japanese sense of family and to generational ties that sansei like Nakajo are trying to restore.

IAM ONE OF THOSE whose trauma was real, and in recent years I have struggled with the thought of my father's humiliation and downfall. After coming to this country in 1903 at the age of 19, he established himself as a successful farmer in Guadalupe. A flamboyant man, he drove a big Buick, wore tailored suits, smoked cigars and sent two sons to Stanford University. With his arrest by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents and the internment of his family, he lost everything he had worked for and achieved in 40 years.

When we returned to Guadalupe after the war, he and my mother went to work as field laborers. Contrary to the Japanese stereotype, my father was a man who freely vented his feelings. A devotee of the Kabuki theater, he would be moved to tears by tales of death, sacrifice and downfall. Yet he never complained about his own economic ruin and loss of status. He carried on as if none of that really mattered. It is only in recent years, long after his death, that I have grown to appreciate his courage and to understand that if the authorities indeed wanted to emasculate him, they did not succeed. When I am able to accept that, perhaps my long night of fear will finally come to an end.

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THE ANXIETY OF BEING A JAPANESE-AMERICAN

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The commission concluded its work in the summer of 1983 with a list of five recommendations, including one that calls for a $1.5 billion fund to be used to provide a one-time compensatory payment of $20,000 to each of the approximately 60,000 remaining survivors of the internment.

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This Review of No-No Boy, written in 1957 and published in the Continental Times, was the first North American review of the novel. Although, this review is targeted towards a Toronto based audience, it expressed an admiration for Okada's style. The article suggests, however, that this novel touches on only a portion of Japanese American life, and that there is much more room for literature regarding Japanese American and Japanese Canadian wartime experience.

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Official site for JOHN OKADA: the book & CONSCIENCE AND THE CONSTITUTION: the film

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Original review of the 1957 publication of No-No Boy

The Continental Times
July 19, 1957

'No-No Boy' - A Story of Misplaced Loyalty
No-No-Boy: by John Okada, published by Charles E. Tuttle Co., of Rutland Vt., and Tokyo. 308 pages. $3 hard bound, $1.95 paper bound.
Within the past several years, we have observed the remarks of a number of Nisei, both in the U.S. and in Canada, that the publishing of a story on evacuation and its consequences, fiction or otherwise, will inevitably come about. The same people also have reminded us that such a story may never be penned by a Japanese American or a Japanese Canadian, reasoning that they were too personally attached to the drama to give it proper perspective.

One Japanese American, however, apparently placed little significance in those remarks, for he has come out with a story which evolves around one person's psychological struggle for rehabilitation in postwar America, a situation which draws much of its foundation in environmental contingencies prior to and during the war years.

John Okada is a native of Seattle and a graduate of the University of Washington and of Columbia University. Evacuated to relocation camps in Washington and Idaho after the start of World War II, he volunteered for military service and saw duty in the Pacific. He is now a resident of Detroit.

His book, however, as its title suggests, does not deal with one who served in the armed forces. On the contrary, it is a story of one who faces much abuse at the hands of other Japanese Americans and psychological turmoil within himself because of the questionable price he placed on the value of loyalty.

"No-No Boy" in a nutshell is this: American-born Ichiro Yamada, with other Americans of Japanese ancestry, was forcibly evacuated from his home in Seattle shortly following Pearl Harbor. While spending his compulsory time in a relocation camp, he received notice from his government to serve in the armed forces of the country which so recently discarded him, together with all other Japanese Americans, as a classified citizen whose loyalty was a point of suspect.

Ichiro, according to the book, was among the minority who refused, for various reasons, to serve a term of duty in the military forces.

The author advances a series of reasons as strong moving forces underlying Ichiro's refusal to heed the draft call. Not the least of these is the vengeful regard he has of his country and its people for the shameful treatment accorded him, his immediate family, and others of Japanese ancestry.

But Ichiro has other reasons. The author portrays him as a product of highly unusual set of circumstances. (At least this reviewer, from his experiences as a member of a similar minority, regards the situations as quite unusual). In the first instance, the domineering force in Ichiro's family is the mother. The father, cast in a plightful light, invariably finds convenient solace in cheap liquor. Since Ichiro was old enough to understand, he was in constant contact with his mother's fanatic creed that Japan was divinely invincible and infallible.

The book does not reveal which was the stronger force behind Ichiro's failure to accept the draft, the government's maltreatment of Japanese Americans or the mother's fanatical influence. The book's preface attempts to shed some light on the essence of citizenship by pointing out in a dramatic fashion that it is a privilege and not a gift, thus denoting the fault behind Ichiro's attitude.

Although the author seems to have selected an unusual theme in which to portray the central figure of his story and leaves the reader with many questions unanswered, a situation which favors a dramatic approach to a realistic one, he has done commendably well in enlarging upon that theme.

As a work of fiction, the book is immensely readable, which after all is a good test of any writing.

This review must conclude on a wistful note, however. And that is, the evacuation and its aftermath, both here and in the U.S., contains material for much more extensive and analytical study for fiction or non-fiction writing. Someone perhaps will attempt to give it coverage which will be lasting.

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Original review of the 1957 publication of No-No Boy The Continental Times July 19, 1957 'No-No Boy' - A Story of Misplaced Loyalty No-No-Boy: by John Okada, published by Charles E. Tuttle Co., of Rutland Vt., and Tokyo. 308 pages. $3 hard bound, $1.95 paper bound.

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This article analyzes Ichiro's self tortured psyche and how it correlates with his loss of masculinity. Furthermore, it article analyzes how Okada's focus on Ichiro's compromised masculinity reflects the Asian American sentiment that white America has caused this demasuclation. Throughout No-No Boy, Ichiro combats his lack of wholeness as a man, and is faced with the realization that he chose not to serve, and his loss of masculine wholeness is his own fault. This article explores this realization, and his relationship with other characters like Kenji and how they affect his view of masculinity.

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Project MUSE - Once More, With Feeling: Cold War Masculinity and the Sentiment of Patriotism in John Okada's No-No Boy

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Project MUSE promotes the creation and dissemination of essential humanities and social science resources through collaboration with libraries, publishers, and scholars worldwide. Forged from a partnership between a university press and a library, Project MUSE is a trusted part of the academic and scholarly community it serves.

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This website provides a brief plot summary of No-No Boy, written by John Okada, who was a Japanese American interred during World War II and also served in the U.S. Airforce. This novel was written after World War II in the Cold War era originally in 1957.

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No-No Boy is set in post World War II Seattle, Washington. Ichiro, who was an internee, and then imprisoned for saying "no" to serving in the U.S. military, has just returned home to Seattle. This article focuses on the complexity of returning after interment and what the political climate was after the War. Furthermore it outlines the controversy of the "return" of internees and the hostility of Anti-Japanese organizations.

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After Internment Japanese American's Right to Return

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After Internment: Seattle's Debate Over Japanese Americans' Right to Return Home

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In No-No Boy, Ichiro's relationship with his mother is fragmented, and this is largely do to his Mother's stubborn loyalty to Japan, and her belief that they won the War. Fruthermore, Ichiros's mother immigrated to the united States with the intention of moving back to Japan. A large group of Ichiro's generation have identified as proud Americans, while the older generations of immigrants refuse to accept their newfound American identities. This article specifically focuses on the generational divide and how it affects communication bewtween Issei (the first generation of Japanese to immigrate to North America), Nisei (the second generation, whose parents immigrated to North America), and Sansei (the

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This article provides contextual information regarding John Okada and the political climate in which he was writing in, and how his own experiences as a Japanese internee played a role in writing this novel. it also dives in to the hostility that no-no boys faced from Japanese American veterans, who chose to serve. This article also explains how Mike's and Ma's reaction to racism strengthens the division between Japanese and American identities (including the opposition that led to internment.)Furthermore, this article investigates the shame that Ichiro and other no-no boys feel after the War.

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The protagonist in No-No Boy, struggles to find his place--in his family, in society, in America, and as a Japanese American. As mentioned in the article Japanese Americans, like Ichiro, were told that no amount of American patriotism could override the facts of their ancestry. Japanese Americans struggled through the constant "negotiation of multiple cultural identities."

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Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art on JSTOR

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Kristine C. Kuramitsu, Internment and Identity in Japanese American Art, American Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Dec., 1995), pp. 619-658

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Executive Oder 9066, issued in 1944, resulted in the "relocation" of Japanese Americans. This document is important, because it's annotation, as well as the document its self provide historical context to Ichiro's experiences as a Japanese American. It also gives credibility to some's viewpoint of America, and high lights that while the United States was at war with Germany, they were not the only country targeting specific groups and relocating them to internment camps.

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Our Documents - Executive Order 9066: Resulting in the Relocation of Japanese (1942)

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OurDocuments.gov. Featuring 100 milestone documents of American history from the National Archives. Includes images of original primary source documents, lesson plans, teacher and student competitions, and educational resources.

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During World War II, Japanese-Americans were relocated to internment camps, despite being completely innocent. In John Okada's novel, there are no actual depictions of what life inside a camp was like. Instead, his novel focuses on the differing attitudes towards internment, and the War itself. This article sheds light on the reality of what the United States government forced Japanese-Americans to leave behind. These photos not only depict the reality of the oppression that Japanese Americans faced, but their struggle to regain their dignity, much like Ichiro in No-No Boy.

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At first glance, Dorothea Lange's photographs of Japanese-Americans, taken in the early 1940s, appear to show ordinary activities. People wait patiently in lines. Children play. A woman makes artificial flowers. Storefront signs proudly proclaim, "I am an American."

But these quiet images document something sinister: the racially motivated relocation and internment during World War II of more than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the West Coast, more than 60 percent of whom were American citizens.

Anchor Editions recently began selling prints of 20 of Ms. Lange's Japanese internment photographs. Half of the proceeds are earmarked for the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to stop the government's mass incarceration of Japanese-Americans and continues to protect immigrant rights.

Although Ms. Lange's photographs were commissioned by the federal government as part of its documentary programs, they were suppressed for the duration of the war. Never actively distributed, her prints were sometimes defaced by military personnel, the word "impounded" scrawled across them. After the war ended, the photographs were discreetly deposited in the National Archives, where they remained, largely unseen and unpublished, for decades.

"These photographs exemplify Lange's mastery of composition and of visual condensation of human feelings and relationships," the historian Linda Gordon wrote in the 2006 anthology "Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese American Internment," which brought many of the photographs to light. "They also unequivocally denounce an unjustified, unnecessary and racist policy. Ms. Lange's critique is especially impressive given the political mood of the time," an era when even liberal public figures, such as the celebrated writer and illustrator Dr. Seuss, gave in to fear about Japanese-Americans.

Ms. Lange's photographs capture not only the oppression of a people but also their struggle to retain their dignity: neatly dressed families huddled together, awaiting transportation to detention camps; a slouching girl, her eyes cast downward, guarding her family's meager possessions; a group of children raising an American flag, affirming their loyalty to a nation that viewed them as alien and dangerous; a relocation center in Manzanar, Calif., in stark contrast to the majestic mountains beyond it.

At the time, the internment was hailed by some and condemned by others. Activists warned that the incarceration of loyal and patriotic Americans would do little to protect the nation, and would serve instead as grist for enemy propaganda. In retrospect, some have compared the internment centers to concentration camps. Nevertheless, in February 1942, two months after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that authorized the exclusion of all people of Japanese descent, both citizens and immigrants, from the West Coast.

The order, which presumed that Japanese-Americans were disloyal and potentially traitorous, was meant to protect the country's most vulnerable assets, including airports, power plants, railroads, shipyards and military installations, from sabotage and spying. As enacted, the order was unambiguously racist: While it also applied to German and Italian nationals, they were spared the indignity of mass incarceration and were instead evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Within weeks of the executive order, Japanese-Americans were ordered to secure or sell their houses, liquidate their businesses and abandon their work or studies. They were told to report to "assembly centers" with only the basic necessities - clothes, bed linens, toiletries and essential personal effects - they could carry. Pets were forbidden. Major household items were stored by the federal government, but at the owners' risk.

Conditions in the assembly centers, typically off-season race tracks, unused fairgrounds or stockyards, were abysmal. Families lived in tiny, often windowless stalls that were invaded by insects and smelled of urine and horse manure. The detainees were eventually relocated to newly built camps in remote areas, where they remained - beset by illness and depression, and surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards - for the war's duration.

Photographing such conditions was not new to Ms. Lange. As a member of the documentary project of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s, she chronicled the lives of the rural poor. She was a masterful portrait photographer, affording her underprivileged subjects, of all races, the same respect as she did her more affluent clients and subjects. Like her F.S.A. photographs, her images of incarcerated Japanese-Americans are notable for their compassion and empathy, capturing the self-possession, complexity and struggles of Americans victimized by stereotypes and viewed by many as criminals.

According to Ms. Gordon, Ms. Lange was angry at what she encountered in the camps: "The documentary style she had developed in the 1930s was inherently critical, and viscerally, emotionally so." Yet, interestingly, she provided no images of resistance. "Of course the Army would not let her near any evidence of it, and she did her work so early in the development of the camps that resistance may not yet have developed," Ms. Gordon surmised.

Ms. Lange's photographs remain as relevant as ever. Anti-immigrant, racist and nationalist fervor are again on the rise. And some are championing the censoring, limiting or discrediting of reporting in order to manipulate news and information.

"Despite the yawning gap between prewar generations and those born after the war," the historian and artist Patricia Wakida wrote in the preface to the groundbreaking anthology "Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience," "there is nevertheless an unnerving familiarity to many of the dark themes running through this book. The neighbor who watches from a safe distance, the church employee who tries to make the best of a horrible situation, the racist politician whose vitriol fires up others with hated, the anguished apologist who accepts egregious injustice as necessity, the victim who blames himself such voices are still heard today. ... The targets have changed, but the themes have remained constant."
Maurice Berger is a research professor and the chief curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Follow @MauriceBerger and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook and Instagram.

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Rarely Seen Photos of Japanese Internment

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At first glance, Dorothea Lange's photographs of Japanese-Americans, taken in the early 1940s, appear to show ordinary activities. People wait patiently in lines. Children play. A woman makes artificial flowers. Storefront signs proudly proclaim, "I am an American."