Books (Single-Author) by Masumi Izumi
Temple University Press, 2019
Discount extended until September 1, 2020!
Temple University Press, 2019
The Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the Internal Security Act of 1950, is the only law in Am... more The Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the Internal Security Act of 1950, is the only law in American history to legalize preventive detention. It restricted the freedom of a certain individual or a group of individuals based on actions that may be taken that would threaten the security of a nation or of a particular area. Yet the Act was never enforced before it was repealed in 1971. Masumi Izumi links the Emergency Detention Act with Japanese American wartime incarceration in her cogent study, The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law. She dissects the entangled discourses of race, national security, and civil liberties between 1941 and 1971 by examining how this historical precedent generated “the concentration camp law” and expanded a ubiquitous regime of surveillance in McCarthyist America. Izumi also shows how political radicalism grew as a result of these laws. Japanese Americans were instrumental in forming grassroots social movements that worked to repeal Title II. The Rise and Fall of America’s Concentration Camp Law is a timely study in this age of insecurity where issues of immigration, race, and exclusion persist.
Papers by Masumi Izumi
Pacific Historical Review, Aug 1, 2005
Pacific Historical Review, Aug 1, 2006
... The first major academic book of its kind, Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest should be on ... t... more ... The first major academic book of its kind, Nikkei in the Pacific Northwest should be on ... the preexisting literature that explained internees' pro-Japan behav-ior as resistance to racism ... result of Americans' failure to dis-tinguish between race, culture, and loyalty. The military's ...
University of Hawaii Press eBooks, Oct 31, 2021
University of Hawaii Press eBooks, Oct 31, 2021
Journal of Asian American Studies, 2001
THNICITY" HAS LONG BEEN the most important reference point of analysis in Asian American studies.... more THNICITY" HAS LONG BEEN the most important reference point of analysis in Asian American studies. Many past works on ethnicity have treated it as something primordial, deriving from ancestry and particular to a nation-state. They assume, for example, that Japanese Americans possess Japanese ethnicity, Chinese Canadians, Chinese ethnicity, and so on, when they discuss the content or nature of ethnicity. However, because of the increased rate of intermarriage and the subsequent rise of multiracials, and because of the influence of poststructuralism on ethnic studies that render problematic fixed and rigid subjectivities, it is difficult to determine who are included in an ethnic group, or the constitution of ethnicity. 1 Moreover, varying degrees of assimilation among the different segments of Asian Americans and Asian Canadians and their diversification by class positions have made it impossible to describe a unified ethnic culture or a homogeneous ethnic community. 2 The following questions thus arise for ethnic studies in the United States and Canada. Is it relevant to study ethnic culture and community in a multicultural society, particularly of those ethnic groups that appear to be well assimilated into the mainstream social structure? 3 And if so, how can one understand ethnic culture and identity without stereotyping or essentializing? "E • JAAS • 4:1 Many studies of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians have focused on biology or descent as the basis of ethnicity. For example, Tomoko Makabe's Canadian Sansei describes the sansei, or the third-generation Japanese Canadians, as a homogenous group, assimilated, middle class, with few ethnic affiliations. 4 Intermarriage is generally considered a "problem," because, relying exclusively on bloodline, intermarriage jeopardizes the maintenance of the ethnicity and ethnic community. 5 Judging from the little involvement in the ethnic organizations and the decreasing social interactions with the fellow Japanese Canadians among her interviewees, Makabe goes so far as to predict the "extinction" of the Japanese community in Canada. 6 Stephen Fugita and David O'Brien, on the contrary, emphasize the persistence of ethnicity in the Japanese American population. 7 Their book, Japanese American Ethnicity, points out that Japanese Americans maintain high levels of involvement in ethnic volunteer organizations and social relationships among group members, while achieving remarkable upward social mobility. By attributing this persistence of ethnicity to traditional Japanese culture, however, Fugita and O'Brien fall into a similar essentialism that limits Makabe's analysis. Although Fugita and O'Brien insist that the sansei retain their ethnicity as much as the nisei, or the second generation, the meaning and the content of ethnicity may be different between sansei and nisei, considering the different social contexts in which they spent their formative years. It is also problematic to assume that the immigrant generation from Japan already had the "clear sense of peoplehood" before they arrived in the United States, and this sense was preserved unaltered for the last 100 years. 8 Downplaying the diversity among Japanese Americans and the particular experiences of Japanese Americans as a racialized group in the United States (in contrast to those of white European immigrants) for the formation of their particular forms of ethnicity, Fugita and O'Brien fail to explain the complex process of the construction of ethnicity and ethnic culture in North America. Scholars of ethnicity who take a social constructionist view, in contrast, see ethnicity as something constructed through the interaction between the mainstream society and the ethnic minorities. 9 For example, according to Joan Nagel, the number of people who reported American
The Journal of American History, Jun 1, 2006
University of Hawaii Press eBooks, Sep 30, 2016
This chapter juxtaposes Asian American scholarship in Japan and the United States, and explores w... more This chapter juxtaposes Asian American scholarship in Japan and the United States, and explores ways in which the field can be pedagogically useful for deconstructing hegemonic social discourses on race, culture, ethnicity and justice both for Japanese and American university students and scholars. Teaching the history of Japanese emigration to the Pan-Pacific region not only helps Japanese students to overcome the historical amnesia about their country’s imperial past, but also helps American students to contextualize the migration from Japan to the US within the overall Japanese emigration history. Structural analyses of race lead to students’ better understanding of different ways in which race has historically created, naturalized and perpetuated social and economic hierarchy within the United States and Japan. Furthermore, learning about the social protest and cultural movements that led to the birth of Asian American studies can promote positive views among university students toward political engagement and social activism.
Asian American Law Journal, Dec 31, 2006
a foreign enemy. 2 Upon such a declaration, the Attorney General was authorized to apprehend and ... more a foreign enemy. 2 Upon such a declaration, the Attorney General was authorized to apprehend and detain any person who the government believed probably would engage in espionage or sabotage. Pursuant to Title II, the Department of Justice constructed six detention camps in 1952. 4 The law was officially repealed in 1971. 5 Title II was one of numerous laws reflecting the federal government's attempts to control national and internal security threats at the expense of civil liberties. 6 The statute, however, had a characteristic that distinguished it from other pieces of legislation that restricted citizens' liberty for the nation's security: Title II embodied the idea of preventive detention. Preventive detention logically contradicts the Fifth Amendment, which prohibits the deprivation of individual liberties without due process. 7 It restricts individual freedom based on future actions such persons might take that would threaten national security. It differs from criminal punishment, which is based on criminal activity that has already taken place. In preventive detention, an individual is not tried beyond a 2. Emergency Detention Act § 102. 3. Id. § 103(a). 4. CHARLES R. ALLEN, CONCENTRATION CAMPS, USA 7 (1966), reprinted in Hearings Relating to Various Bills to Repeal the Emergency Detention Act Before the H. Comm. on Internal Security, 91st Cong. 3369 (1970) [hereinafter Hearings].
Discount extended until September 1, 2020!
The journal of American and Canadian studies, Mar 31, 2000
Peace & Change, 2010
This essay documents the history of the Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Central Los Angeles, a J... more This essay documents the history of the Senshin Buddhist Temple in South Central Los Angeles, a Japanese American temple belonging to the Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land) School. In the United States, ethnic Buddhists are generally perceived as socially conservative and politically passive, while convert Buddhists are known to be active in peace movements and social activism. The essay analyzes the reforms Senshin members introduced to the temple's religious rituals and elucidates the development of new cultural activities and art forms, which not only contributed to the emergence of vernacular ethnic art and music, but also to the construction of a community of socially engaged Japanese American Buddhists. By opening their temple to members of local minority communities, Senshin Buddhists formed artistic and political coalitions with other peoples of color, harboring subaltern cultural activism, which transgressed national, racial, and religious borders, and defied hegemonic racial, gender, and class hierarchies.
Pacific Historical Review, May 1, 2005
In September 1971 Congress repealed the Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the McCarran Interna... more In September 1971 Congress repealed the Emergency Detention Act, Title II of the McCarran Internal Security Act of 1950. This act had authorized the President to apprehend and detain any person suspected as a threat to internal security during a national emergency. This article analyzes the Title II repeal campaign between 1967 and 1971, revealing that the public historical memories of Japanese American internment greatly influenced support for repeal in Congress and among the American public. Civil rights and antiwar protesters both feared that such a law might be used against them, but Japanese Americans had been interned during World War II. Their presence in the repeal campaign made the question of detention starkly real and the need for repeal persuasive. Conversely, their work for repeal allowed them to address a painful part of their American experience and speak publicly as a community.
Pacific Historical Review, 2022
University of Hawaii Press eBooks, Dec 31, 2017
Temple University Press eBooks, Oct 1, 2019
Such support, predicated on a truly capacious vision of how this collection functioned as both co... more Such support, predicated on a truly capacious vision of how this collection functioned as both conversation starter and field interrogator, was unwavering from proposal to final submission. This aspirational engagement with collection topic and project focus was likewise reflected in all our interactions with Ashley Petrucci, Gary Kramer, and other members of the Temple University Press team, including most recently Sarah Munroe, who has maintained momentum and commitment. Admittedly, The Subject(s) of Human Rights reflects the provocative suggestions put forth by the anonymous readers, who pushed us (as editors) and our contributors to clarify the intellectual, academic, and activist stakes of such human rights inquiry and critique. To that end, the contributors to this collection have very much been part of this larger publishing journey; the originality of their ideas coupled with the willingness to revise made this a joyous editing endeavor. Jamie Armstrong, editorial project manager at Amnet Systems, deserves considerable praise for guiding the manuscript at a critical production stage. We are also indebted to the unparalleled generosity of Dinh Q. Lê, whose "Burma," from the evocative Fragile Spring series, serves as the cover for this collection.
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Books (Single-Author) by Masumi Izumi
Papers by Masumi Izumi
During the Second World War, several Allied countries oppressed Japanese diaspora groups (also known as Nikkei). The United States and Canada apologized in 1988; today, Brazil and Mexico face reparative demands for their persecution of Nikkei communities. There has been no integrated analysis of these interconnected injustices. This article offers a preliminary account, highlighting some of the key transnational factors involved. It also addresses the significant domestic bias of public discussions about the injustices, a bias that ignores the historical centrality of transnational forces in historical processes of anti-Asian oppression. We ask whether the possible spread of apology politics from the US and Canadian cases to Brazil, Mexico, and Australia might help to promote a new political awareness of the transnational character of the wartime oppression of Nikkei civilians in Allied countries. However, our analysis reveals that the politics of apology tends to promote domestic bias in public understandings of anti-Japanese racism. Indeed, to the extent that transnationality emerged in our cases, it was in the perverse form of "White civility" comparisons that chided countries in the Global South to emulate their allegedly more advanced apologetic counterparts from the North. Yet, there remain compelling reasons for domestic political apologies in our cases. The point is not to proscribe apologies but rather to understand their biases and, in the cases at hand, to use the spread of apology debates in our cases to promote a more widespread understanding of transnationality in the production of anti-Asian racism and White supremacy.
Trans-Pacific Japanese American Studies is a unique collection of essays derived from a series of dialogues held in Tokyo, Kyoto, and Los Angeles on the issues of racializations, gender, communities, and the positionalities of scholars involved in Japanese American studies. The book brings together some of the most renowned scholars of the discipline in Japan and North America. It seeks to overcome past constraints of dialogues between Japan- and U.S.-based scholars by providing opportunities for candid, extended conversations among its contributors.
While each contribution focuses on the field of “Japanese American” studies, approaches to the subject vary—ranging from national and village archives, community newspapers, personal letters, visual art, and personal interviews. Research papers are divided into six sections: Racializations, Communities, Intersections, Borderlands, Reorientations, and Teaching. Papers by one or two Japan-based scholar(s) are paired with a U.S.-based scholar, reflecting the book’s intention to promote dialogue and mutuality across national formations. The collection is also notable for featuring underrepresented communities in Japanese American studies, such as Okinawan “war brides,” Koreans, women, and multiracials.
Essays on subject positions raise fundamental questions: Is it possible to engage in a truly equal dialogue when English is the language used in the conversation and in a field where English-language texts predominate? How can scholars foster a mutual respect when U.S.-centrism prevails in the subject matter and in the field’s scholarly hierarchy? Understanding foundational questions that are now frequently unstated assumptions will help to disrupt hierarchies in scholarship and work toward more equal engagements across national divides. Although the study of Japanese Americans has reached a stage of maturity, contributors to this volume recognize important historical and contemporary neglects in that historiography and literature. Japanese America and its scholarly representations, they declare, are much too deep, rich, and varied to contain in a singular narrative or subject position.
Challenging the notion that Nikkei individuals before and during World War II were helpless pawns manipulated by forces beyond their control, the diverse essays in this rich collection focus on the theme of resistance within Japanese American and Japanese Canadian communities to twentieth-century political, cultural, and legal discrimination. They illustrate how Nikkei groups were mobilized to fight discrimination through assertive legal challenges, community participation, skillful print publicity, and political and economic organization.
Comprised of all-new and original research, this is the first anthology to highlight the contributions and histories of Nikkei within the entire Pacific Northwest, including British Columbia.