The Tule Lake WRA Center information bulletin. (Newell, CA), Mar. 2 1944. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84020533/1944-03-02/ed-1/
There are very few objective records from the Japanese American perspective that detail the living conditions after being relocated to internment camps during WWII. The Information Bulletin speaks objectively, factually of the living conditions and restrictions that existed in these camps, and as such it is invaluable as an objective historical teaching tool.
This document is careful to note the number of Japanese Americans who are already present, the camp capacity, and the numbers who are continuing to arrive, leading to overcrowding. It records the number of people living in the camp, the area they inhabit, and how they must work collectively and collaboratively in order to survive.
It outlines government routines that have been put into place that those incarcerated at the camp must follow, and, upon close reading, it details that five young men have refused to report to their local draft boards. As a result, warrants have been issued for their arrests. Though the Information Bulletin provides a factual record, it allows students the space to make inferences about all that isn’t reported.
It is a powerful teaching tool about the ways reportage and media can be used to resist government abuses.
This is a Japanese American newspaper that is written by the Japanese Americans living in an internment camp. The bulletin details the living conditions of the camp as well as the routines that have been established by the federal government.
The newspaper, The Tule Lake WRA Center Information Bulletin, provides insight into the daily lives of Japanese Americans in what we now call incarceration camps (then referred to as “relocation camps”) during World War II. Many journalists came into the incarceration camps and photographed and recorded their observations about Japanese Americans in the camps, but none of the journalists interviewed the incarcerated Japanese people. The Information Bulletin serves as a record of the lives of incarcerated Japanese Americans, as told in their own words, during this time. It lists the routines, rules, and restrictions placed upon Japanese Americans as they lived in these camps. The newspaper is written in an evidentiary manner, almost as though the authors understood it would later be used for some other informational purpose.
- Why do you think the newspaper is called the Information Bulletin? Who is this information intended for? Why?
- In close reading of the document, what information do you find most important as the reader? Why?
- Note the placement of the information on the page; what is placed where and why? What is the impact of placement?
- The Information Bulletin reports that a cameraman from Life Magazine will come to take pictures. What is odd about this information?
Common Core State Standards
RI.11-12.1: Cite strong and thorough textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text, including determining where the text leaves matters uncertain.
- Close reading of the newspaper provides insight into the daily lives of the Japanese Americans in internment camps. It also allows the reader to make inferences about what the reporters are leaving unsaid.
RI.11-12.2: Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
- This newspaper’s reporting inherently has multiple ideas: those that are printed and those that are inferred. Through close reading, teachers and students can determine the central ideas present in the document.
RI.11-12.4: Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).
- Use the Bulletin to determine if what is written literally means what it says or if the articles communicate other types of information to the reader.
- Compare and contrast the resistance of young Japanese Americans in refusing to be drafted with those who refused to fight in the Vietnam War. This can be done by having students listen to a TED talk or having them create a PowerPoint presentation in small groups.
- Have students research the conditions of Japanese American internment camps using the National Archives Records of Relocation Authority. What information is maintained in the records? Have students chart what they observe from the camp records. Are there similarities and differences between camps? Have the class analyze the information and draw conclusions and inferences from their findings.
- Why did our government destroy all of the internment camps after World War II?
- Have students research the reparations for Japanese Americans who survived the camps (as well as their descendents). Discuss whether reparations made the survivors or their descendents whole?
- Have students analyze a timeline/map of the internment camps. Where were the internment camps located and why?
- Korematsu v. United States (1944) may be presented as a challenge to this primary source. Discussing both sides of the issue, given the collective national emotional level at the time, has to be balanced against the inherent bias that the Japanese American community faced as a whole.
- Added to this argument would be the 1988 Civil Liberties Act that awarded $20,000 to each American of Japanese descent that had been incarcerated, as well as setting up an education fund for those who were incarcerated.
- The Korematsu v. United States Supreme Court case is the rationale for the internment of Japanese Americans from the West Coast.
Links to resources for approaching those topics
- There are a multitude of resources available that can be used to discuss the government’s rationale for national security versus discrimination based on the ethnic heritage of an identified group of American citizens.
- It is important for teachers to provide a Japanese American point of view as a counterpoint to Korematsu to balance historical perspectives.
- Each of these resources provides an extensive overview of Japanese internment for teachers and students.
- Extensive visuals of the day-to-day lives of the young and old who were displaced from their homes and sent to various internment camps.
- Photo of Japanese American Troops in Mississippi (circa.1943) during World War II. Discuss the irony of this photo given the place and time it was taken.
- In order for the present generation to completely understand how internment camps existed, it is necessary to understand the political climate of the period, and how cultural bias and racism, as well as cultural isolation, factored into how American society reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor.