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This is History for the Reckoning, a podcast that dives deep into the history that's hard to hear but critical to understand. Season one, American Concentration Camps, the story of World War II Japanese Incarceration. Welcome to the addenda episode for episode one of the podcast. I'd like to start out with a huge thanks to Susan Kame for coming on the show. She has years and years of expertise. She's a big figure in this field. I was honored to be able to interview her. And uh a little story about her. When I first joined the JACL or the Japanese American Citizens League, an organization that you're going to hear a lot about over this podcast, they had a welcome call for all of the new members for that month. And when I came on it, she was on it. She was there introducing the organization, and she was also the voice for at least one of the videos from a video series that JACL has put out, sharing this history as well. So I encourage you to go to the JACL's website and to find it there. So over this series, you're going to hear a lot of terms that you're not going to be familiar with. A lot of them are going to be in Japanese. So the Japanese Americans that immigrated to the United States brought their language, their culture, and even across generations, many of the words from the Japanese language have stuck around, especially for those first and second generations that were here in the 1940s. So I'd like to share some of those with you that are going to be used in the podcast so that you'll be up to speed no matter what. So the first thing that you already heard is the system of naming the generations. So this is based on the number system in Japanese. So big disclaimer, all these Japanese terms I'm going to be saying in this addenda episode are not going to be pronounced correctly because I am not Japanese. Or I don't speak it at all. So let me give it my best shot and try to explain these as best I can in my terrible accent. So in the Japanese number system, counting one through five is Ichi, Ni, San, Yon, and Go. And that corresponds with the generations. So if you happen to look up how to count one through five in Japanese, you'll be able to understand the names of the generations. So our first generation is the Isei. This is the immigrant generation, those who were not born in the United States, but came here some point in their lives. So, as it's important to know from the history that Susan shared with us, they were not able to legally become naturalized or become citizens in the United States. So a lot of their status was seen as uh aliens, as foreign peoples, people who did not have the same rights and privileges as citizens, and they were often treated as such. Important distinction that they didn't even have the option to become citizens. Another thing that's kind of interesting about the history that we'll be covering, I mentioned how we're going to hear a lot about the Japanese American Citizens League down the road. The Japanese American Citizens League was composed of the generation right beneath the Isei or the Nisei. So the Isei did not make up the Japanese American Citizens League. The Japanese American Citizens League are those who kind of filled the vacuum after many of the community leaders who would have been Isei, those who immigrated to the United States, were arrested, were removed from their homes by the FBI very shortly after Pearl Harbor. So the second generation is the Nisei. They're the children of the immigrants. These are citizens. So they were born in the United States, and therefore, because the United States has birthright citizenship, they had all the rights and privileges as citizens, even though often they were not treated the same way as other American citizens. So these are those that filled the gap after the Isei were many of the community leaders among the Isei were arrested, were removed, and the Nissei, many of them were already into adulthood at this time. So they were able to step up as the community leaders as part of the JACL and as part of many other organizations. So when we get to the camp experience, we'll often hear the term, we'll often hear it said that some two-thirds of those who were incarcerated were citizens. So these were Nisei or the third generation Sansei. So speaking of the Sansei. The Sansei are the third generation. And when we get into future episodes, you'll hear a lot about them because they're often, their generation is often credited as those who pushed for reparations. So the entire camp experience, the forced removal, the incarceration, the confinement into concentration camps was very clearly illegal, unconstitutional. After the war, this reparations campaign was undertaken largely by the Sansei, who had a different cultural outlook than their Nisei parents and especially their Isei grandparents. It's often said, or many of the stories in these families will talk about how the Isei and Nisei chose not to talk about the camp experience at all after they were able to leave, to go home, to restart their lives. And that extended to the fact that many of the Sansei did not learn this history from their Nisei parents. So many times there are stories of they're sitting in class, it comes up as, oh, all the Japanese were arrested in the United States, and it was for their own good or something else that was not accurate. And the Sansei would get curious and they'd look it up. And in looking it up, asking their parents, asking their grandparents, they'd learn more, they'd get activated, you might say, and they got politically active. And that's how the reparations movement that progressed from the 1970s came to be. So now the fourth generation is the Yonsei. They're the people that uh often I'm interacting with. So so many of the people that I interact with are Sansei and Yonsei. They're the people that are engaging with this history today. So as the generations have gone on, the Sansei fought for those rights, and as many of the Yonsei that I see as the leaders, the new emerging leaders in the community today who are sharing this history, who are spreading awareness, and who are doing great activism. And the final generation that I'm talking about today is fifth, the Gose. There are many Gose that I know as well. They're in my generation, sometimes even younger, and they're also picking up the mantle and they're doing their best as American citizens to make the world a better place. Be able to be. The next Japanese word I'd like to share is Nikke. So this is a blanket term for all those who are ethnically Japanese that live outside of Japan. So I'm told that it also applies to those who live not in the United States, anywhere in the world, but are not living in Japan. So perhaps in your community they'll have things that are like Nikkei events. I know in Salt Lake City we have what are called Nikkei lunches now and then, which is just for all the community that have ancestry from Japan. The next one is Inu or Dog. So you'll hear many of the stories of those who were in the camps and how they interacted with different political ideologies, all confined in one place. So there were some people who were thought of, and history will show demonstrably were reporting on their fellow camp in inmates. They were uh reporting on their activities to the governments or to the camp authorities. Uh many of them were part of the JACL, and sometimes they would be referred to as Inu or dogs by those who thought that they were bending to the camp's whims, to the government's whims, were spying on their fellow incarcerees. Alright, the next Japanese word is kibei, which is a reference to those who were educated in Japan. A kibei is someone who was born in the United States, but because their parents had the means and felt that it was important that their children had a piece of their culture, learn the Japanese language, or just as a chance to interact with their Japanese family back home, back home for these immigrant parents, uh they would send their children all the way over to Japan, and so they would be educated in language and manners and customs, so that when they came back, they would know all of these things and have strong ties to the country of their parents' home. These are referred to as the kibay. Alright, so the next one are a few just phrases that you might hear just a couple times in the series. Well, I guess this next one is very common. So it's Shikata Ganai. So I've often seen it translated as can't be helped. When I'm watching anime, it comes up. If something bad happens, a character might say shikata ganai, which is just like nothing you can do about it. Uh but even though for me as an outsider in passing, when I hear that phrase and I see it translated, it seems like such a simple thing. It is a deep and residing concept, especially for these Japanese and Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during World War II. So it's this whole philosophy of do not struggle against the things that you cannot change and embrace the ways in which you can affect good in your life and your community's life in the world. So when they say Shakata Ganai, sometimes it can be seen as defeatist, like, oh, the government's locking us up, shakata ganai, there's nothing we can do about it. But it's also embracing the things that you can do about it. So when these people were incarcerated, often they would improve their surroundings, they would plant gardens, they would beautify their space, they'd make furniture. There was this real sense of the community working together to make it as beautiful as possible, despite these awful circumstances that they felt they couldn't help. Alright, so the next term, which I don't think will come up a lot, but Hakujin. This refers to white Americans. So sometimes those in camp would refer to white Americans and they'd use the Japanese term hakujin. Uh, next one I want to say is the Shimpo, a word for newspaper. So in the first days after Pearl Harbor, many of those who ran the Shimpo or newspapers, the Japanese language newspapers especially, were arrested by the FBI. We're going to hear about that in the next episode. One special shimpo that I want to talk about is the Rocky Shimpo. So during the incarceration, many people were confined into camps. There were some groups that chose to protest this treatment, this unconstitutional action that the government had taken. One way they might do that is by resisting the draft that would come later. So the government decided we need more soldiers, we can get them from these giant concentration camps where we've locked up all of these people, many of them uh young, strong men. So they would try to draft Japanese Americans from the camps. Uh and sometimes there are pockets of resistance and organized resistance, even, particularly in one of the camps called Heart Mountain in Wyoming. And as that was happening, we're going to share a little bit of that story later, but there was a Shimpo, a newspaper in Japanese in Colorado, I think it was in Denver, where there was an editor named James O'Mora who chose to share that story. So as this resistance was happening inside of the camp in Wyoming, James O'Mora lived in Colorado where people had not been forced to relocate, had not been forced into the concentration camps. So he was free to use his freedom of speech, freedom of the press, to share the story of what was happening in the camp, of these people resisting the draft. And it turns out that he was very brave to do so because in the end, all those people who did resist the draft were rounded up, were arrested, were tried and convicted, and James Omora was included with them. So by using his freedom of speech, by using his shimpo or newspaper, he was spreading the message of resistance, of freedom, and he suffered the same consequences as those who chose to do the actual resisting. The next Japanese term is Hokori, which is often translated as pride or dignity. When you listen to oral histories of the camp, sometimes people will mention this as a way of taking their camp experience with a sense of purpose and improvement, similar to some of the concepts that covered in Shikata Genai. Every time I hear it, it's like the sense of despite what's going to happen, we will keep our heads held up high. And I really respect that. And the final Japanese term I'd like to go over is the kenjinkai, a reference to ancestry, those who are from the same prefectures. So kenjinkai is when they're in camps, there are all these people brought in from totally different parts of California, Oregon, Washington, all over the West Coast. They might not necessarily be from the same areas. So you'll hear stories within the concentration camps of people from the country now being forced to interact with people from the city and that being a huge culture clash. But one way that you could find common ground was that uh maybe you were an Isei and you were literally from Japan, or you're an Isaii and you had some experience with uh your ancestral homeland, the places that uh your ancestors were from in Japan. And sometimes common ground could be built that way. So that's the Japanese terms I wanted to go over with you. Uh there are a few English terms that I think are important to cover. So throughout this series, uh you'll hear us often talk about those who lived through the camp experience as survivors. So some people feel like this word is loaded, implies that something really horrible happened, then they made it through. And I would say that's exactly the point, that this was a horrible thing that the government did. And even though many of them who lived through it did not experience physical trauma necessarily, every single one of them experienced the trauma of their community being disintegrated before their eyes, their possessions being torn away, the loss of everything that they had known and being forced into a camp and having to rebuild afterward is an absolutely horrible thing. And it's very common in this community to refer to those who lived through it as survivors. So when you see uh organized events for those who made it through the camps, they'll often say it's for survivors. Uh, the next one is that we refer to the entire incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans as the incarceration. So sometimes you'll hear that this was the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans. So I choose to use the word incarceration, as many others do, to give it that connotation of how awful it was, how this was a confinement. They were in gigantic prisons, prisons the size of towns sometimes. These people were not allowed to leave. When you say internship, at least in a modern connotation, it kind of gives the feeling of like, oh, this is something that I'm doing to learn skills and to jump into my trade and things like that. And we don't want any of that, I don't want any of that connotation applied to what I see as a horrific mismanagement by the government, a horrific misdeed by our nation. So I refer to it, and as many others do, as the incarceration. Now, the biggest hot button English word you're going to hear me using is referring to the camps themselves as concentration camps. I'm doing that deliberately. Historically, at the time, the US government in papers, those that represented the government, will sometimes use the word concentration camps because definitionally that is what they are. They're literally concentrating a specific group of people into one place. They were not allowed to leave. It was exclusively based on their race. Those who were married to a Japanese person but were not Japanese themselves could choose not to go to the camps. And even those who were little babies in orphanages who happened to be of Japanese ancestry were taken into the camps. All I had to say, entirely based on race, we refer to them as concentration camps. Now, this is not to say that they were remotely similar to the death camps made in infamous by the Nazi regime, which were being done at the same time. So oftentimes when we hear the word concentration camp, we exclusively think of those that were run by the Nazis, and those are absolutely unimaginably horrific. I do, I am fine with the connotation that people hear concentration camp and think something absolutely unforgivable happened. I'm okay with that happening, and definitionally, using the term concentration camp as opposed to internment camp is still accurate. So that's what we're going to be using throughout this series. Okay, I hope that wasn't too heavy for you, and I hope you've learned some of the terms that you're going to hear, the Japanese words, and also the English words that we're going to be using for the rest of the series. So as I close out today, I'd like to share with you another history-based podcast that I've been listening to that I hope you guys can get into too. It's called Cultureful. It's an award-winning narrative interview podcast that bridges global history, world cultures, and family legacy. So I'll tell you about a few of the episodes that I've listened to. It follows a woman who's uh of like my generation. I'm gonna guess she's in her 30s, sharing the story of her family. So our host takes the her, these those that she interviews, her guests, through their entire family history, at least a couple generations back. And as she does so, it's framed as this is us making a friend. This is our new friend who is telling us their family's story, which I think is so impactful, and I love it as a way to convey history because even as you learn the history of this one family, the podcast weaves in what I would say is like hard history. So as this person is telling about uh their family fleeing Vietnam during the Vietnam War, uh, we'll break into little history portions that'll give some context to what happened to that family, but also to inform what happened to all the families that were leaving Vietnam. So I really encourage you to go and check out Cultureful. That's culture plus F-U-L, like the word beautiful, wherever you get your podcasts. It's a really beautiful way to learn a lot of history, to make a new friend, and to learn another person's experience, as I hope this podcast will do. It'll help you learn some empathy to reach across to a different type of experience that you do not have. Alright, so that is what I have for you for this addenda episode. Thank you so much for tuning in, and we'll catch you next week. Season one of History for the Reckoning is made possible by support from the JACL Mount Olympus chapter, as well as generous financial support from the Takahashi Family Foundation and the JA Community Foundation. The music was produced by Patrick Coffin. If you want to support the show, follow us on Instagram at History for the Reckoning. Sign up for our newsletter at History for the Reckoning on Substack, where you'll also find the show notes for each episode, or support us financially through Patreon at patreon.comslash history for the reckoning.