The study “‘Now We Are One’: How Japanese American Internment Camp Newspapers Helped Create Communities, 1942-1943” by Glen Feighery from University of Utah examined the newspapers created by the interned Japanese-Americans and their role in building communities.

As covered earlier here in JRN, the internment of the Japanese-Americans during the Second World War where Imperial Japan and the United States were enemies remains a dark spot in the history of the US. However, for journalism it was interesting: there were even newspapers run by the interned Japanese-Americans serving the needs of the community, which this paper addressed. 

There has been some previous research on the newspapers inside the internment camps, which operated under the auspices of the War Relocation Authority (WRA). The first was John D. Stevens, whose finding was that the press was quite controlled. Jay Friedlander found out that the reporting in two of the newspapers was typical for small community newspapers. 

Lauren Kessler, however, suggested that the “typical small community newspaper” might be an exemption, and found out that the newspapers were “accommodationist” and exhorted their readers to accept their fates and look beyond the incarceration. She acknowledged that the newspapers may have had a role in creating the community, but that they were also heavily biased towards government propaganda. 

Catherine A. Luther, in her textual analysis of all ten internment camp newspapers, found out that they reflected struggles with identity and articulated both a Japanese and American identity for the residents and were instrumental in constructing the sense of community, despite the fact that, as revealed in many studies, they did not enjoy full First Amendment rights. 

This study also looked at all the ten internment camp newspapers, and government papers about WRA policies and goals for the camps. The study begins in the summer of 1942 with the opening of the first relocation centers, and extends to March 1943. The questions were related to how the community newspapers promoted a sense of community behind the barber wires. and did they go beyond that to publish editorials etc. to create a sense of community, and what values did they articulate.

One thing that the newspapers did much was to provide translations of English articles in Japanese, as a sizable portion of the internees could only read in Japanese. They also provided information about the camps themselves in the form of maps and such. And, of course, explicitly sought to create a sense of community.

Camp newspapers commonly called for unity, morale, and self-reliance. Some did explicitly mention the dissatisfaction with the internment, but nevertheless called for stoic acceptance of the circumstances. In particular, the newspapers sought to bring together the disparate groups into a new community. 

There was also particularly indirect criticism of WRA and of the internment and how it was implemented. The types of labor, such as the topping of sugar beets, were criticized as being arduous and the demands placed on the workers were inhuman. Thus, the newspapers provided a forum for criticizing the agricultural program of WRA. 

Overt criticism of the government was not unheard of, and some voiced concerns whether the Japanese-Americans could ever trust the government again, after the often contradictory demands of the WRA. 

In conclusion, the author argues that the internment communities did not automatically coalesce, but the community was fostered by the newspapers that appealed to the readers’ resilience and occasionally provided a forum for voicing dissent with specific policies, such as beet topping. 

The article “‘Now We Are One’: How Japanese American Internment Camp Newspapers Helped Create Communities, 1942-1943” is in American Journalism. (Free abstract).

Picture: Rose Nakagawa, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/536982. CREDIT: War Relocation Authority, the National Archives, unrestricted use.