About

The Yamashita Archive is a collection of correspondence letters, photographs, official documents and materials/ minutia from an immigrant family in the U.S. from the early 1900s til the 1960s (or so). It strives to tell not only the story of Japanese American wartime incarceration, but also the story of the next generation, coming of age in the 1950s and 60s and what their lives held. Internment history is often told as a discrete moment. What if the story was broadened? What could we get out of that?

The place of this family archive is to give the trajectory of a single family that settled in Oakland Caliornia, was incarcerated in the desert of Utah and left there for a variety of locales and futures. Commentary links the archival documents together. Intimate portraits of brothers and sisters allows a broader narrative to cohere. Siblings write to each other about where they can get jobs in the defense manufacturing industry and who they should date. These documents bring a sense of humanity and lived experience.

The family was dispersed across the country and internationally based on the experience of camp, student relocation, and military service. The Sansei (or third generation) have lived lives in differing places and circumstances, one legacy of detention. The family moved from a strong grouping in Oakland Japantown with some members in Calexico, Arizona and rural California to Midwestern and Eastern metropolises of Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York as well as rural Idaho, Ann Arbor, Michigan. After the war, internees, settled in new cities, and many had to start over, if not start over again. This movement was profound, leading to further movement or dispersion from California and the West Coast. The Yonsei grew up sometimes with close relationships with their parents and grandparents, great aunts and uncles.

Kishiro and Tomi with Friends in Oakland. Tomi is third from left in back row and Kishiro is fourt from left in the back row. Circa 1900s-1910s. Kimi may be the young girl sitting in front. And Sus may be the baby held by another woman, far right in the back row.

Wartime incarceration made Japanese Americans realize their place as racialized "others," leading some to recognize or realize solidarity with other marginalized people of color working against oppression. Wartime internment also led some Japanese Americans to assimilate even more towards a mainstream culture. Some volunteered to fight while in camp. Some were able to leave camp for school and then were drafted into the army. Some placed more faith in the nation. Some wanted to prove their status as loyal Americans by fighting in the war. The way that this generation of people responded to their experiences in camp informed how they lived out their lives and how they told their stories or remained silent.

The third generation Japanese Americans (Sansei) had widely distinct life experiences. The eldest of this generation grew up with the internemnt (concentration) camp as a seminal experience, either as a college aged student or as a youngster or toddler in camp. By contrast, the younger half of the sansei children grew up in urban Oakland, Los Angeles, New Jersey suburbs, Hong Kong, and elsewhere in the later 1950s. Some of these Sansei were not told about wartime incarceration until they were much older. By taking this archive into the decades after World War II, we can see how that memory is lived out and experienced by the succeeding generation, how the memory is told and untold. How did the wartime experience affect the way that Nisei and Sansei lived their lives, thought about civil rights? Tomi refused to apply for U.S. citizenship when she was legally permitted to do so. She had lived through the uncertainty of not knowing if the nation where she had set up her life would throw her out into a starving and wartorn place. This anecdote is one story that made its way to the succeeding generations. How does memory of trauma move into successive generations?

Why keep a family archive? Is it more than the scraps from the past, that hold meaning for a wider audience than the family itself? Is it a construction like a shrine? Can it be a space for reflection and critical understanding or scholarship? Are family archives useful places to look for hints of a historical narrative?

Ted's family, Iyo's family and Tomi and Chiz at the beach in California. Circa 1960s.