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Abstract: In February 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which created the legal means for the forced removal and incarceration of ca. 120,000 Japanese Americans. They spent many years in ten incarceration camps of the War Relocation Authority. While the incarceration was justified by military necessity, it is clearly based on racism and discrimination. It was only in 1988 that the US government apologized for the incarceration and paid reparations to former incarcerees.
This study focuses on this not well-known topic and deals with the question of how the incarceration is represented in different media of cultural memory nowadays. The incarceration is part of the cultural memory not only of Japanese Americans but has also found its way into the cultural memory of US society as a whole. Through the analysis of graphic novels ("Take What You Can Carry" [Kevin C. Pyle, 2012] and "Gaijin: American Prisoner of War" [Matt Faulkner, 2014]), picture books ("So Far from the Sea" [Eve Bunting, 1998] and "Fish for Jimmy" [Katie Yamasaki, 2013]) as well as paintings and prints by the Japanese American artist Roger Shimomura (1939-), this study shows how the Japanese American incarceration and its trauma is remembered.
Graphic novels, picture books, paintings and prints are here defined as distinct media of cultural memory through which traumata and memories can be represented in a unique way. To decipher the narrative strategies of the media, different theories are combined. Jan and Aleida Assmann’s theory of cultural memory, Astrid Erll’s ideas about media of cultural memory as well as the theory of prosthetic memory by Alison Landsberg (2004) and the theory of postmemory by Marianne Hirsch (1997) build the theoretical framework. Media of cultural memory enable people to remember the past, but also refer to present and future. With the help of the theory of cultural traumata by Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. the incarceration is shown to be a trauma that not only influences Japanese Americans but also US society in general. In addition, the theory of narrative identity (Jerome Bruner, Douglas Ezzy, Margaret R. Somers) is used to show how the story of the incarceration stabilizes identities.
Since this study looks at media of cultural memory produced by both Japanese Americans and non-Japanese Americans, it offers a variety of points of view and a number of narrative strategies. All discussed works use text and visuals as well as fact and fiction, but to a different degree. The analysis establishes how the producers mix facts of the incarceration with personal events in their lives, in which way symbols of the incarceration (e.g. barbed wire fence or guard towers) are depicted visually and how text is used to explain the incarceration experience and to show the recipients the connection between past and present.
The analysis of excerpts of graphic novels and picture books as well as paintings and prints shows that these media of cultural memory have a therapeutic function for both producers and recipients. Through the fragmentation in image and text these media allow producers and recipients to reflect on and work through traumata. Roger Shimomura’s paintings and prints stand out in particular: he spent a part of his childhood in an incarceration camp and places himself in some of his artworks. In this way, he reflects on his own experiences and allows the recipients to gain an insight into his personal trauma.
Furthermore, these media have a didactic function. They do, however, not only give the recipients the opportunity to learn about the incarceration from historical fact but combine fact and fiction. By doing so, the media ask the recipients to reflect on their own position in society. Especially Faulkner’s graphic novel and the picture books show the relationship between the depicted characters in text and image, so that recipients can imagine themselves in the situation of Japanese Americans during World War II. Thus, recipients are encouraged to empathize and show solidarity with the Japanese American community; a feeling of belonging, not only with Japanese Americans but also with minority groups in US society overall, is created.
These media of cultural memory are therefore not simple objects with which the Japanese American incarceration is remembered by; instead, these are objects that warn people about the risks of repeating history. Past, present and future are shown to be intertwined
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