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Accepted Paper:
Understanding internment and captivity in the Pacific War
Sarah Kovner
(Columbia University)
Recent years have seen an outpouring of discourse on the US internment of Japanese civilians, but less on the captivity of its POWs in Japan. As descendents seek to reshape the stories of their parents, how can we more fully understand the experience of internees and POWs in the Pacific War?
Paper long abstract:
The previously unpublished letters of Futoru Yoneoka reveal life at Tule Lake: flower-arranging and poetry-writing juxtaposed against fires, shootings, and martial law. After requesting to return to Japan to join his parents and siblings, Yoneoka was marked "disloyal" and held from 1942-1946. Strikingly, Allied POW diaries and recollections detail quotidian baseball and plays, against violence and rotten food. Allied POWs such as Leland Chandler were moved from camp to camp throughout the Japanese empire. Taken together, these experiences shed light on the complex story of captivity during the Pacific War.
At the time, Washington diplomats sent missive after missive detailing the torture of American servicemen held in Japanese POW camps, to which Tokyo diplomats returned cables protesting the treatment of Japanese internees at Tule Lake. Examining the particulars of these experiences can reveal the parallels and ruptures of internees in the US with those of Allied POWs in the Japanese empire, and help us shed light on the meaning of captivity in war.