Honorable Mention Research Paper: A “Land You Could Not Escape yet Almost Didn’t Want to Leave:” Japanese American Identity in Manzanar Internment Camp Gardens
While prior scholarship on Japanese American Internment during World War II has been prolific, few have researched the role the natural environment played within the camps and the impact it had on the internees. Some scholars have supposed that the environment was chiefly a negative influence, like Connie Chiang, but few have studied the resourceful accomplishments of the internees in designing and cultivating gardens that reflected both their ancestral identity and contemporary American sensibility. Scholars such as Kenneth Helphand argued that the gardens were strictly an act of defiance. Others like David Neiwert lay claim to the Japanese immigrant enclave losing its sense of community during internment. This paper will discuss how, in actuality, through the gardens, the internees were able to convert their space from a form of social discipline into one of personal power and communal restitution
