That Damned Fence

This book explores writing produced by Japanese Americans during their WWII incarceration. In five of the ten War Relocation Authority camps, occasional literary magazines were published alongside weekly or daily newspapers. The newspapers communicated necessary information from camp administrators to the detained, but the literary magazines contained creative works written by Japanese Americans themselves. In Topaz, TREK captured the distinctive culture and community that developed in the Utah camp, asdid the Pulse for Granada/Amache in Colorado, the Dispatch Magazine for Tule Lake in northern California, the Denson Magnet for Jerome, and The Pen for Rohwer, both in southeast Arkansas. The fiction, poetry, journalism, and artwork in the magazines provide insight into the daily realities and emotional experiences of the incarcerated. Comparing the magazines to one another demonstrates how the geographic locations and climates of each camp, points of origin and professional and educational backgrounds of the imprisoned, gender and generational demographics, and attitudes of camp administrators combined to create not a monolithic experience of the camps," but rather five unique communal modes of survival. Particular attention is paid to the art and literature of Toyo Suyemoto, Taro Katayama, James Yamada, Toshio Mori, Hiroshi Nakamura, Min?e Okubo, Henry Sugimoto, and Hisaye Yamamoto"--