Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration (Asian American Experience) - Softcover

Ishizuka, Karen L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 025207372X ISBN 13: 9780252073724

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2006

Synopsis

Combining heartfelt stories with first-rate scholarship, Lost and Found reveals the complexities of a people reclaiming their own history. For decades, victims of the United States' mass incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II were kept from understanding their experience by governmental cover-ups, euphemisms, and societal silence. Indeed, the world as a whole knew little or nothing about this shamefully un-American event. The Japanese American National Museum mounted a critically acclaimed exhibition, "America's Concentration Camps: Remembering the Japanese American Experience," with the twin goals of educating the general public and engaging former inmates in coming to grips with and telling their own history.

Author/curator Karen L. Ishizuka, a third-generation Japanese American, deftly blends official history with community memory to frame the historical moment of recovery within its cultural legacy. Detailing the interactive strategy that invited visitors to become part of this groundbreaking exhibition, Ishizuka narrates the processes of revelation and reclamation that unfolded as former internees and visitors alike confronted the experience of the camps. She also ponders how the dual act of recovering--and recovering from--history necessitates private and public mediation between remembering and forgetting, speaking out and remaining silent.

By embedding personal words and images within a framework of public narrative, Lost and Found works toward reclaiming a painful past and provides new insights with richness and depth.

"Karen Ishizuka's Lost and Found reclaims an important part of American history that was nearly forgotten. By exploring the meaning of the World War II camps from the inmates' own memories, this book achieves a level of intimacy that is not only profoundly moving, but is also essential to understanding the significance of the camps and the work of the Japanese American National Museum in preserving this history."

--Senator Daniel K. Inouye

About this title

About the Author

Karen L. Ishizuka is a an independent writer and documentary producer who has produced numerous award-winning films including Something Strong Within, and Toyo Miyatake: Infinite Shades of Gray, an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival. She served the Japanese American National Museum for its first fifteen years as Senior Curator, Senior Producer and Director of its Media Arts Center.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—The term concentration camp is most often associated with Nazi Germany, but teens may think differently after reading this account of curating the Japanese American National Museum's exhibit "Remembering the Japanese American Experience." Ishizuka chronicles the exhibit's development from its inception, its first visitors' responses, reminiscences and stories, and its opening on Ellis Island when the need arose to meet with the local Jewish community to discuss the use of the controversial term "concentration camp." After more than two years of meetings and discussions, it was finally decided not to change or restrict the exhibit's use of the term. The author also provides a different perspective on how incarcerated Japanese Americans responded to being unlawfully interned. Often history texts have portrayed them as passive and submissive, but Ishizuka has gathered primary sources that show that many Japanese Americans whose lives were disrupted and radically changed by Executive Order 9066 did voice their disgust and anger toward their government's decisions. It is sad to note how the U.S. government responded to their letters and pleas-many were simply ignored, while others received convoluted responses from various agencies, and some of the writers were moved to more isolated camps farther from their families. The inclusion of photographs, letters, and newspaper clippings from the 1940s adds to the book's competent telling and makes it a good addition to the study of this period in American history.—Joanne Ligamari, Rio Linda School District, Sacramento, CA
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 025207372X
• ISBN 13: 9780252073724
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 217