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11 - Food, Labor, Sickness, and Health

from Part II - Concentration Camps or Relocation Centers?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2018

Roger W. Lotchin
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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Summary

The attitudes of diverse groups toward the Nikkei cannot be understood within the race paradigm. These opinions were nuanced, complex, and eminently situational. Racism was only one of a very graded spectrum of feelings. These ran the gamut from outright racism to profound respect and varied according to motivation. The closest one can come to biological racism is in the attitude of the Native Sons. Yet even they specifically eschewed the idea of racial superiority and did not accuse the Nikkei of being snakes, insects, vermin, or lice. So beyond race, the Nikkei were opposed on grounds of class, culture, labor standards, business habits, proto feminism, dual citizenship, experience with the war, religious background, assimilability, and family practices. And the Nikkei, like Caucasians, also had their own biases. Even so, despite all, it is entirely possible that there was never a majority on the West Coast who opposed or wanted the Nikkei relocated. But the keepers of the race paradigm do not understand this. If there was ever an “absolute doctrine” of history, an orthodoxy, where the complex is made simple, it is the story of race in Japanese Relocation.
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Chapter
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Japanese American Relocation in World War II
A Reconsideration
, pp. 167 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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