Building on new writing and newly discovered writing, the anthology The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration (Penguin Classics, 2024) weaves together previously unseen and little-known works with extant material to reveal the collective voice of a people who used prose and poetry, fiction and non-fiction, to contest the experience of mass exclusion and unjust imprisonment. But the incarceration was not one single event: once inside camp, the selections demonstrate how the writing continued to confront a specific succession of government edicts from loyalty registration, segregation, and military conscription to the offer of voluntary renunciation of American citizenship leading to repatriation, expatriation, and even self-deportation. Among the revelations in the anthology are the first short stories and novel excerpts translated from Tessaku, the high-quality, peer-reviewed literary magazine that we will show was founded in direct response to the government crackdown at the notorious Tule Lake Segregation Center.

As the 2024 conference program chairs remind us, “Since its inception, Asian American Studies has been particularly sensitive to histories of inclusion, marginalization, exclusion, and elision—in political life, narratives, and canons.” This panel will meditate on the marginalization, exclusion, and elision of many Japanese American voices traditionally unheard–and in some cases actively suppressed–including those marked by generational, linguistic, and political difference. Additionally, it will begin a conversation with fellow teachers and researchers about how the inclusion of these voices will change how we think, feel, and learn about this pivotal event in our field.