In season 8 of The Berkeley Remix, a podcast of the Oral History Center at UC Berkeley, we are highlighting interviews from the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project. The OHC team interviewed twenty-three survivors and descendants of two World War II-era sites of incarceration: Manzanar in California and Topaz in Utah. This four-part series includes clips from these interviews, which were recorded remotely via Zoom. Using healing as a throughline, these life history interviews explore identity, community, creative expression, and the stories family members passed down about how incarceration shaped their lives.
In this episode, we explore the history, legacy, and contested memory of Japanese American incarceration during World War II.
Incarceration represented a loss of livelihoods, property, and freedom, as well as a disruption—cultural and geographic—in the Japanese American community that continued long after World War II. While some descendants heard family stories about incarceration, others encountered only silence about these past traumas. This silence was reinforced by a society and education system which denied that incarceration occurred or used euphemisms to describe what Japanese Americans experienced during World War II. Over the years, Japanese Americans have worked to reclaim the narrative of this past and engage with the nuances of terminology in order to tell their own stories about the personal and community impacts of incarceration.
This episode features interviews from the Oral History Center's Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Oral History Project:
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft/oral-history-center/projects/jain
This episode includes clips from: Miko Charbonneau, Bruce Embrey, Hans Goto, Patrick Hayashi, Jean Hibino, Mitchell Higa, Carolyn Iyoya Irving, Susan Kitazawa, Ron Kuramoto, Kimi Maru, Lori Matsumura, Alan Miyatake, Jennifer Mariko Neuwalder, Ruth Sasaki, Masako Takahashi, Peggy Takahashi, Nancy Ukai, and Rev. Michael Yoshii. Additional archival audio from the US Office of War Information and the Internet Archive.
To learn more about these interviews, visit the Oral History Center's website:
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft/oral-history-center
Produced by Rose Khor, Roger Eardley-Pryor, Shanna Farrell, and Amanda Tewes. Narration by Devin Katayama. Artwork by Emily Ehlen. Original theme music by Paul Burnett. Additional music from Blue Dot Sessions. Album artwork by Emily Ehlen.
Newsreel audio clip "Japanese Relocation" from the U.S. Office of War Information, ca. 1943, courtesy of Prelinger Archives. Newsreel audio clip "August 14, 1945, Newsreel V-J Day" from the Internet Archive.
A special thanks to the National Park Service's Japanese American Confinement Sites Grant for funding this project.
The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the opinions or policies of the U.S. Government. Mention of trade names or commercial products does not constitute their endorsement by the U.S. Government.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT: "A Place Like This": The Memory of Incarceration:
https://update.lib.berkeley.edu/2023/11/13/the-berkeley-remix-season-8-episode-2a-place-like-this-the-memory-of-incarceration/