Transcript Race and the National Body

Images of Nisei Manhood during
World War II
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“It would be grossly simplistic to assume that
the human body has timelessly existed as an
unproblematic natural object with universal
needs and wants...” (Roy Porter, “History of
the Body”)
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To what extent is the body a “flesh and blood”
object? To what extent is it a “symbolic construct”?
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The boundaries of the body are fluid, subject to
historical change
Life Magazine,
Dec. 1941
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Family form as mediator and metaphor of U.S.
national existence
Two important national kinship metaphors:
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Male-headed home
Military fraternity
Racial implications of imagining the nation as a
symbolic kinship
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Regardless of the actual inequality and
exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation
is always conceived as a deep, horizontal
comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that
makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for
so many millions of people, not so much to kill,
as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.
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Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, (1986), 7.
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Scapegoating outsiders promotes both negative
and positive attachments:
“The passion of . . . negative attachments to others
is redefined simultaneously as a positive
attachment” to those who can claim membership
in the privileged social group.
“Together we hate, and this hate is what makes us
together.”

Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,”
Social Text 22.2 (2004), 118.
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The consensus of opinion is that . . . there is
more potential danger in this state from the
group that is born here than from the group
that is born in Japan.
--California Attorney General Earl Warren,
Testimony before the Tolan Committee, 1942
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If the Japanese Army should be landed on the West Coast
and should be driving the White Man before him . . . how
do we know the American Japanese . . . might not have
an upswelling of emotion even on the part of those who
might have said, “I am a loyal American; I owe nothing
to Japan,” [who] might suddenly say, “This, after all, is a
race war. These men are my brothers. I have more in
common with them. I never really belonged here
anyway.”

Verbatim Transcript of Proceedings: War Relocation
Authority Meeting, July 23, 1942. RG 210,
National Archives.
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"This is a bit of propaganda in part. It will be a
sort of 'corps d'elite . . . We are working on
plans for radio programs, movie shorts,
newspaper articles .”
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Dillon Myer, WRA Director, January 1943
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"If your strength were diffused
throughout the Army, you would
be important only as manpower. . .
. But united, and working
together, you would become a
symbol of something greater than
your individual selves, and the
effect would be felt both in the
United States and abroad."
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U.S. War Relocation Authority,
Nisei in Uniform, 1944.
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“Story after story is told . . . about the JA’s ability to bear
pain.”
“They’re deadly,” summarized one Caucasian officer.
“We’re America’s secret weapon,” Sergeant M. Miyamoto
bantered.
Photograph originally published in Life; reprinted with accompanying
text in Nisei in Uniform (USGPO, 1944).
Another Inmate Gold Star Mother, April 21, 1945.
WRA promotional still shows a colonel from the
Seventh Service Command in the camp at
Granada, Colorodo as he presents the
Distinguished Service Cross to the mother of
aman killed near Sureveto, Italy. Bancroft
Library.
"I've seen a good deal of
the Nisei in service and
never yet have I found
one who did not do his
duty right up to the
handle."
Stilwell presents Mary Masuda the
Distinguished Service Cross in honor of
her brother, SSgt. Kazuo Masuda, at the
Masuda farm Talbert, California, Dec.
1945
--General Joseph Stilwell ,
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Initially buried in
Italy.
Remains returned to
U.S. on Nov. 9, 1948.
Family sought burial
in cemetery near their
home, but faced
“restrictive
covenants.”
After public protests,
Masuda’s body was
buried there on
December 9, 1948.
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"Blood that has soaked into the sands of a
beach is all of one color. America stands unique
in the world, the only country not founded on
race, but on a way - an ideal. Not in spite of,
but because of our polyglot background, we
have had all the strength in the world. This is
the American way.“
-Army Captain Ronald Reagan, 1944
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“Maybe I am getting soft, but my heart weeps
for our men, especially those who gave all,
those who really ‘went for broke.’ I feel that
we have written with our blood another
chapter in the history of our adventure in
democracy.”
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Masao Yamada, 442d Regimental Chaplain
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"[T]hese [Nisei]
soldiers are as far
away from the
stereotyped
picture of the
evil-doing sons
of Japan as the
all-American boy
is from a headhunter . . ."
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"They came back to this country, why, we will
never know. I will give you my opinion. I think
most of them came back to keep out of serving in
the Japanese Army. They capitalized on their
American citizenship to that extent . . ."
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Testimony of Dillon Myer, Director, WRA, Hearings Before a Subcommittee
of the Committee on Military Affairs, U.S. Senate, 78th Congress, 1st Session,
on S. 444, a bill providing for the transfer of certain functions of the WRA to the
War Department, part 4, Nov. 24, 1943, Events at the Tule Lake Center,
November 1-4, 1943.
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Sex,
Scapegoating,
and the
Racialized Body
of the Nation
“Troublemakers” at the
Leupp Penal Colony, 1943
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LIFE Magazine, March
20, 1945. Caption
reads: These five Japs
are among the trouble
makers imprisoned
within the Tule Lake
Segregation center.
Here they are
answering roll call.
LIFE Magazine, March 20, 1945. Caption reads:
These five Japs are among the trouble makers
imprisoned within the Tule Lake Segregation
center. Here they are answering roll call.
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“the most
maladjusted
group of Japanese
in this country”
“The girls didn’t
like to dance with
them – they were
social outcasts.”
Kibei found
companionship
among the “old
bachelors”
Photograph of Kibei youth from
LIFE photoessay. Note pinups of
white women visible on wall behind
him.