Inheriting Camp

For Americans of Japanese ancestry, "camp," as it is commonly referred to, has become central to our collective and individual identities, so much so that our history before and after the camps is often overlooked in comparison. While identity is formed from a complex mix of internal and external factors, ours is particularly shaped by the camp experience. The historians Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen concluded that in contrast to white Americans, who perceived the past in personal terms, African Americans and American Indians had a collective connection to broadly shared experiences such as slavery, the civil rights movement, and violation of Indian treaties.* In a similar way for Japanese Americans, the exclusion and incarceration was a definining episode not only in their history but also in their sense of identity. For example, the questions "Were you in camp?" and "What camp were you in?" inevitably come up in the social ritual of introduction and conversation.

...the exclusion and incarceration was a defining episode not only in [Japanese American] history but also in their sense of identity.

Camp has also become a critical part of the ethnic identity and shared history of those of us who were born after the war. Like other Sansei, I grew up hearing time divided into "before the war" and "after the war." "Before the war my folks owned a grocery store; after the war my father became a gardener." "Before the war we used to go on family outings; after the war we didn't go anywhere." So we knew about "before" and "after" but hardly anything about the event that had so distinctly divided these memories.

...they laughingly explained that in camp, apple butter had been a poor substitute for real butter and they had so much of it they never wanted to eat it again.

...One of my earliest recollections of my parents' mentioning camp was when I gave them a gift of apple butter. Instead of sharing in my delight of what I considered a specialty item, they laughingly explained that in camp, apple butter had been a poor substitute for real butter and they had so much of it they never wanted to eat it again. This kind of culinary association can also work in reverse; my uncle had so much Spam in camp, rumor has it he still has a Spam sandwich for lunch every day.

Many Sansei have similar apple butter and Spam stories, odd examples of times when their parents and relatives would obliquely refer to camp. More often that not, such references would be tempered with disclaimers such as "but why cry over spilled milk," "let bygones be bygones," and "forgive and forget." However, despite the bygones and the spilled milk, we realized that although they did not articulate it, our parents were very much affected by camp. In fact, camp had a lot to do with who they were and how they raised us.

As heirs to this indignity, we were recruited to be part of their unspoken mission to be 200 percent American.

Most children are urged by their parents to do their best. However, for us Sansei, there was an urgency to our parents' exhortations to do well that seemed to transcend our own benefit. Many people of color, especially of our parents' generation, had wearily learned that they had to be twice as good as the next person to prove their worth. As former inmates of America's concentration camps, they found this lesson sharpened by having been imprisoned by their own government because of their race. As heirs to this indignity, we were recurited to be part of their unspoken mission to be 200 percent American. They tacitly believed that sustained model citizenry would provide retroactive evidence that it was "they," meaning but never naming the U.S. government, and not "we" who had been in the wrong. And the Nisei would thereby be absolved of their, which had become "our," humiliation.

Karen L. Ishizuka, Chief Curator, Japanese American National Museum

From Lost and Found: Reclaiming the Japanese American Incarceration

*Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, "History in Black and Red: African Americans and American Indians and Their

Collective Pasts," in The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1998), 147-76