Wrestling With Tradition: Japanese Activities at Amache, a World War II Incarceration Facility

I employ archaeological analyses, archival research, and oral histories to investigate traditional Japanese practices that were performed at Amache, a World War II Japanese American incarceration facility. I argue that these inter-generational practices helped to bridge a cultural gap that existed between several generations of Japanese Americans. For many incarcerated Japanese Americans, their first exposure to many traditional activities occurred during incarceration. The resulting social environment incorporated aspects of Japanese, Japanese American, and mainstream American influences, all of which were adapted to conditions during incarceration. Similarly, archaeological analyses allow for the investigation of traditional practice features. These provide evidence regarding the significance of the adapted landscape at Amache. Evidence of these practices suggests Amache internees had both a strong desire to maintain and celebrate these aspects of their Japanese heritage but they also incorporated non-traditional elements that reflected the unique living conditions during incarceration. Incarceration, I argue, created an environment in which a unique internee consciousness was formed in which the use of traditional practices was a focal point. The physical remains of traditional practices allow archaeologists to determine aspects of this newly formed consciousness that are not readily apparent in historical documentation.

The Keyes to Reclaiming the Racial History Of the Roberts Court

This article advocates for a fundamental re-understanding about the way that the history of race is understood by the current Supreme Court. Represented by the racial rights opinions of Justice John Roberts that celebrate racial progress, the Supreme Court has equivocated and rendered obsolete the historical experiences of people of color in the United States. This jurisprudence has in turn reified the notion of color-blindness, consigning racial discrimination to a distant and discredited past that has little bearing to how race and inequality is experienced today. The racial history of the Roberts Court is centrally informed by the context and circumstances surrounding Brown v. Board of Education. For the Court, Brown symbolizes all that is wrong with the history of race in the United States - legal segregation, explicit racial discord, and vicious and random acts of violence. Though Roberts Court opinions suggest that some of those vestiges still exits, the bulk of its jurisprudence indicate the opposite. With Brown’s basic factual premises as its point of reference, the Court has consistently argued that the nation has made tremendous strides away from the condition of racial bigotry, intolerance, and inequity. The article accordingly argues that the Roberts Court reliance on Brown to understand racial progress is anachronistic. Especially as the nation’s focus for racial inequality turned national in scope, the same binaries in Brown that had long served to explain the history of race relations in the United States (such as Black-White, North-South, and Urban-Rural) were giving way to massive multicultural demographic and geographic transformations in the United States in the years and decades after World War II. All of the familiar tropes so clear in Brown and its progeny could no longer fully describe the current reality of shifting and transforming patterns of race relations in the United States. In order to reclaim the history of race from the Roberts Court, the article assesses a case that more accurately symbolizes the recent history and current status of race relations today: Keyes v. School District No. 1. This was the first Supreme Court case to confront how the binaries of cases like Brown proved of little probative value in addressing how and in what ways race and racial discrimination was changing in the United States. Thus, understanding Keyesand the history it reflects reveals much about how and in what ways the Roberts Court should rethink its conclusions regarding the history of race relations in the United States for the last 60 years.

Maddening the Minotaur : Dora Maar'a power over Pablo Picasso

Dora Maar is primarily viewed as Pablo Picasso’s mistress and muse in art historical scholarship, and scholars frequently analyze her work in terms of its evolution as a consequence of her relationship with Pablo Picasso, therefore asserting the power Picasso had over Maar. Through comparative analysis and socio-historical investigation, I assert that Maar’s strong personality, political awareness, and artistic vision profoundly influenced Picasso during the Spanish Civil War and World War II.

Leon Tebbetts : an artist who chose to be forgotten

This paper will focus on Leon Tebbetts’ time in the United States Army Air Corps as an artist for Special Services. It will demonstrate how a combination of personal associations and psychological factors, including Hartley’s death, contributed to Tebbetts’ decision to abandon painting, with the result that this World War II muralist has been almost entirely forgotten.

Out of the ordinary : Anne Ryan and collage

Anne Ryan (1889-1954) was an active member of New York’s vibrant avant-garde art community during the tumultuous period marked by World War II. Ryan participated in the famed 1951 “Ninth Street Show,” and was an early member of Betty Parsons’s legendary stable of artists. She is not widely known today, however, and her influence is rarely acknowledged. Ryan is primarily known for her abstract collages—works that are frequently linked to Abstract Expressionism.

Beautiful victims : childhood and the holocaust in the work of Gottfried Helnwein

"For the past three decades, contemporary artist Gottfried Helnwein has shocked viewers with his Holocaust-related paintings, drawings and installations. Born in Austria in 1948, Helnwein witnessed the immediate aftermath of World War II in Europe from a child’s perspective. Consequently, the horrifying images summoned from Helnwein’s imagination are inspired by the memories and repercussions of this tragedy. His work addresses his parents’ unwillingness to speak of the atrocities as well as the exploitation of the Holocaust in contemporary popular media. His work questions not only how such a tragedy could have taken place, but also how contemporary perception of this event has been affected by total media saturation and the passage of time. To shock viewers, Helnwein portrays strikingly realistic images of distressed, wounded and morally ambiguous children in works that have been regarded as controversial and outspoken"

Looking Back: A Granddaughter's Quest for Redemption and Understanding

On December 7th, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This event signaled the beginning of America's involvement in World War II. It also signaled the beginning of a change of life for the Japanese living in the United States. Following the attack, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were placed in ten internment camps across the United States. Two-thirds of those interned were American citizens, including my grandmother. The fact that these American citizens were treated as prisoners in their own country had a devastating effect on the relationships of those interned and the generations of Japanese Americans that followed. This essay recounts my grandma's experience and explores how her internment changed her life and the lives of her descendants.

Human Rights in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Future of the Troubled State after Kim Jong-Il

Since 2008, international speculation about the viability of Kim Jong-Il's leadership in North Korea has been at the forefront of diplomatic discussions. North Korea is known to be a secretive state where human rights violations abound. This paper discusses the history of leadership and government in North Korea since World War II, the current human rights situation in the country, the role of China, and potential successors to Kim Jong-Il. The ramifications of impending regime change are discussed in terms of North Korea's human rights issues and economic problems. While current efforts at diplomacy have proved ineffective, the need for concerned nations, intergovernmental organizations, and non-governmental organizations to be prepared to engage North Korea after Kim Jong-Il is imperative.