Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-r5zm4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-21T11:27:30.814Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 16 - Japanese Incarceration, Settler Colonialism

from Part II - Transitions Approached through Authors, Texts, Concepts, and History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 May 2021

Victor Bascara
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Josephine Nock-Hee Park
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
Get access

Summary

Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660 depicts the US government’s attempt to manage and eliminate a problem population, first through incarceration, then through ethnic dispersal. This chapter argues that this book should be read within its immediate historical context: that of US Indian termination, the period from the 1940s to the 1960s, when the US government worked to dismantle tribal sovereignty and force indigenous peoples to assimilate and live “as Americans.” Reading Okubo’s work within this historical context makes her indictment of American democracy clear: this chapter shows that Citizen 13660 riffs on tropes of European immigration and settlement in order to establish a counterpoint between Euro-American and ethnically Japanese populations. Okubo reveals how systematically and how variously Japanese Americans are excluded from the promises of freedom, prosperity, and inclusion made to white settlers, emphasizing how the forms of inclusion that followed incarceration extend rather than mitigate the state’s attempt to eliminate the Japanese American community. The settler colonial analytic through which I approach Citizen 13660 reveals that processes of removal, incarceration, and dispersal constitute a pattern that can be traced across time and across racialized populations. Japanese incarceration exemplifies how settler states use inclusion and assimilation to manage and eradicate populations deemed undesirable.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×