Talk:Internment of Japanese Americans

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Move to "Incarceration of Japanese Americans"[edit]

I'd like to rename this page "Incarceration of Japanese Americans." Given the ongoing debate on this talk page about whether to use the language of "concentration camps," (which I, as a Jew, do by the way believe is appropriate to describe Japanese incarceration) modify the language to "incarceration camps," which is still more accurate than the euphemistic "internment camps."

As per these essays, the term internment is a historical euphemism that is not a legally appropriate description of the forced relocation and incarceration of Japanese Americans:

https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2012/02/10/146691773/euphemisms-concentration-camps-and-the-japanese-internment https://www.nps.gov/tule/learn/education/upload/RDaniels_euphemisms.pdf https://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/2021/04/13/internment-or-incarceration-why-words-matter-describe-japanese-american-wartime-experience/ https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/636107892/some-japanese-americans-wrongfully-imprisoned-during-wwii-oppose-census-question https://www.npr.org/2019/07/05/739051933/this-isnt-the-first-time-americans-have-debated-what-to-call-detention-centers

With the move to a new title, it should be noted that the term internment has been used euphemistically. Likeanechointheforest (talk) 19:05, 29 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

While I respect the view that "internment" is euphemistic, I tend to believe that its usage to describe the illegal incarceration of Japanese Americans by the United States during WWII goes beyond the literal meaning of the word. For example, "concentration" is a similarly loaded term because its facial meaning is just that it brings a large number of people together. The word "concentration" does not literally entail all the human rights abuses that we associated with concentration camps, but its connotation in the context of a concentration camp is linked to those things because of the history of its usage. "Internment" is similar in how its literal meaning cannot possibly capture the dehumanizing incarceration of Japanese Americans, but its acquired connotation in referring to that makes it an accurate descriptor.
History may unmake "internment" in favor of some other term, but for now, it is clearly the most common phrase used to refer to what America did to Japanese Americans during WWII. See news results for "Japanese" and "internment" in 2020 and "Japanese" and "incarceration" in 2020, which shows an 8-1 preference for "internment". Google ngram results show a similar result. "Internment" is clearly the WP:COMMONNAME, and thus I oppose this move.  Mysterymanblue  22:28, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
As per essays cited above and in the article, the word "internment" is not only euphemistic, but legally incorrect, as internment is something that applies to enemy aliens, not citizens, and those who were legally interned were treated much better than the Japanese Americans forcibly incarcerated. I support this move. Likeanechointheforest (talk) 15:40, 15 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What the dictionary and/or legal meaning of "internment" is, though, is largely irrelevant. And not even only as far as WP guidelines goes, but also sociolinguistically: the word has acquired the almost-exclusive connotation of reference to the Japanese imprisonment during WWII, so whatever meaning the word might have had and whatever euphemistic purposes it might have been used for initially, history hath long forgotten. That being said, I am personally fine with calling them concentration camps rather than internment camps - and even with Wikipedia using "concentration camp" as the definition of internment camps in the lede, in Wikivoice; however, regarding article titles, the most common name for them is still "internment camps", wherefore the pages should not be moved unless and until something else replaces that as the dominant terminology. (I don't particularly care for "incarceration", either, because of its connotations with criminal prisoners - I would not want to use language that could cause readers to associate the imprisoned Japanese Americans with criminal status). Firejuggler86 (talk) 00:20, 16 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
"Incarceration of Japanese Americans" fails as an alternate title per WP:NAMINGCRITERIA. It is imprecise, as it more accurately would apply to an article whose subject is crime rates among Japanese Americans; and it is not commonly recognizable because it is not a commonly used term for the forced mass detention of people in the US during WW2. VQuakr (talk) 21:25, 17 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

From Wikipedia: 

           The Wikipedia article I have selected is about the internment of Japanese Americans, which was another racial attack to a minority group during the 20th century and mainly affected the West Coast, making it part of the history of California. The article is very well developed, as it is an extensive article with plenty of details and it is written very well. It breaks it down into sections and it includes details about who all was involved, when, where, and what happened after the internment of Japanese Americans. In addition, the article is written neutrally as it specifically provides facts, rather than the author’s opinion. Lastly, although the article is lengthy, the author provided over 130 references related to the information provided by in the article.

From your Ebook chapter: 

           The Ebook California : A History, chapter, “Discrimination and Accommodation,” page 187 makes emphasizes on the prosecution that minority groups were suffering and the attempts to stop it during the 20th century, which is now part of the history of the state of California. An example is the organization of Asiatic Exclusion League, a group against Asian minorities. This organization was responsible for discriminating Asian children, as they were not allowed in the same schools as Caucasians.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeedurBrain (talk • contribs) 22:47, 17 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Would you consider changing it to Japanese American concentration camps? or World War II Japanese American Incarceration? I'm trying to think of alternatives that would address the concerns of the Japanese American community--the Japanese American Citizens League, Densho, the Japanese American National Museum, as well as leading scholars in the field (like Roger Daniels) state that the term internment is historically inaccurate, while the term concentration camps was historically used by FDR and members of his administration, and the idea will be more recognizable to an American audience as many members of the media already call them Japanese American concentration camps.Hcmaruyama (talk) 18:37, 7 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that changing the title from "internment" to "incarceration" is important. Honestly, since so many scholars (as well as the Japanese-American community at large) have come to the consensus that "internment" is both historically inaccurate and euphemistic, I was a little surprised that Wikipedia editors also haven't changed it yet. Could you have the page for "Interment of Japanese Americans" redirect to "Incarceration of Japanese Americans" [or equivalent title]? River 05:00, 18 October 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SELI-chan42 (talk • contribs)

I think calling them incarceration camps is more accurate than calling them concentration camps or internment camps. First of all, the definition of the term concentration camp is "a place which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or mass executions". Japanese American camps easily stand out when compared to Nazi concentration camps, Ustaše-run concentration camps, or Italian concentration camps because nobody performed forced labour there or was systematically killed there. Also Unit 731 and Plantation complexes in the Southern United States meets the definition of concentration camps better than Japanese American camps. While I do agree that calling them "internment camps" is euphemistic, I think calling them "concentration camps" is dysphemistic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.144.204.68 (talk) 21:48, 1 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have any reliable sourcess that support this change? You've only cited your own opinion. Not to be pedantic, but our policies maintain that we follow how reliable sources address this issue, and not our own interpretations. There is an entire section in the article that refers to sources making a strong case for "concentration camps" vs. other terms. TarkusABtalk/contrib 19:07, 2 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you consider Xinjiang internment camps to be concentration camps. 95.144.204.68 (talk) 20:43, 7 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(1) It does not matter what I think. It matters what term sources use. (2) It is a totally different issue that does not dictate what happens here. And that terminology has been discussed extensively as well, if you read the talk page archives. TarkusABtalk/contrib 01:19, 8 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Historical Studies[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 22 August 2022 and 16 December 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Ej2022 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: EZEKEATHAN.

— Assignment last updated by E Middle March (talk) 13:29, 9 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 24 February 2023[edit]

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) The Night Watch (talk) 14:55, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Internment of Japanese Americans → Japanese American Incarceration – For all of the reasons listed here and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans#Misuse_of_the_term_%22internment%22

Using the term "internment" is incorrect and not at all appropriate given that it is not the language used by those affected by it and entities including the Associated Press have now stated as much (as noted in the article). Wikipedia should align with other sources in utilizing the correct nomenclature to describe the historical incarceration of Japanese Americans in concentration camps. DCsansei (talk) 13:50, 24 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose. Incarceration is just a synonym for imprisonment, and the term does not accurately describe the abuse.

The term "concentration camp" does not evoke the Boer War or Cuba; it evokes Auschwitz. Mackerm (talk) 09:12, 28 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

I understand that there was no consensus for this move at this time, however, I continue to believe that the page should be moved. For those opposed, I encourage review of the following:

These sources are all in addition to the discussion within the article itself describing how terminology of this topic has moved past using the anachronistic term "internment" to the more accurate and contemporary WP:COMMONNAME -- incarceration. DCsansei (talk) 09:17, 5 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. "Internment" is technically incorrect when applied to the full target population, and incarceration is becoming preferred usage over internment in contemporary print and electronic media. Eventually this article's name will change and reflect that trend.—Myasuda (talk) 03:23, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Asian American History[edit]

Welcome! Look forward to seeing your edits and improvement to this article. DCsansei (talk) 07:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've worked to rewrite the lead section- I noticed that it was very long and not particularly organized with a lot of overly detailed information that's repeated in the body of the article. Feedback would be appreciated! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Anniewink328/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans Anniewink328 (talk) 17:46, 24 November 2023 (UTC)Anniewink328[reply]

Hi @Anniewink328:, I agree that the lead for this article is sub-optimal and could use a rewrite, so thank you for volunteering to tackle it. Regarding your comment about information repeated in the body of the article, this is by design. Per the Wikipedia Manual of Style (MOS:LEAD), the lead is supposed to summarize the body. And since the lead repeats information from the article, it does not need citations (MOS:CITELEAD). Also, I read your draft. Your draft only discusses the legal orders that started and ended the internment. It omits a lot of topics discussed at length within the article: the domestic support/opposition of the internment among the public and military officials, the conditions and life within the camps, aftermath and reparations, terminology debate, and so on. The lead should summarize and give appropriate weight to these components. TarkusABtalk/contrib 05:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Article name and terminology used in article text[edit]

Despite the consensus seeming to be in favour of keeping "internment" as the article's title, the article's text now solely uses the term "incarceration". Consistency between the two would be preferred, especially since the change to the article's text seems to have been made recently without discussion. Eldomtom2 (talk) 19:06, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The article seems to rely on references such as Himel, Yoshinori H.T. (2016). "Americans' Misuse of "Internment"". Seattle Journal for Social Justice. 14 (3): 797–837. Close examination of this reference reveals that it minimises definitions of the word that do not match the arguments made by its author. The definition in the multivolume Oxford English Dictinary (OED) that it quotes (after giving some level of authority to that particular dictionary) does not match with the OED's 2015 edition definition of "internment camp" and, given the selective use of definitions in the source, one has to suspect that the definition of "internment" in the earlier OED edition used has been avoided as it also does not meet the purposes of Himel. The current OED definition of "internment" reads:

The action or practice of confining a person or thing within the limits of a country or place; (now esp.) detention without trial for political or military reasons; the fact or condition of being detained in this way.

— [1]
I suggest that the most relevant element of this definition is detainment without trial.
The solution for the article might be to find references that do not argue a partisan position (such as Himel).
In any case, the English language still exists as the basic tool for editors to use. The meaning of "internment" is closely associated with the lack of any trial – see, for instance, the mention of interment in Operation Demetrius during the The Troubles in Northern Ireland. This is a clear instance of internment of selected citizens of the country in which they were interned.
It might be helpful to study sources such as [2], which seems to fit with the 2015 OED definition given above. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 16:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Incarceration" as the appropriate term for this episode of history is not limited to only Himei's use. It is a term favored by numerous works in the current state of the academic field of historiography on the WWII-era detention of Japanese-American citizens of the United States, across the past twenty years. For examples from academic scholarship:
  • Jasmine Alinder, Moving Images: Photography and the Japanese American Incarceration (University of Illinois Press, 2009)
  • Anne M. Blankenship, Christianity, Social Justice, and the Japanese American Incarceration During World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2016)
  • Roger Daniels, "Incarceration of the Japanese Americans: A Sixty-Year Perspective", History Teacher 35, no. 3 (May 2002): 297–310
  • Stephen Fugita & Marilyn Fernandez, "Religion and Japanese Americans' Views of their World War II Incarceration", Journal of Asian American Studies 5, no. 2 (June 2002): 113–137
  • Alice George, "Eighty Years After the U.S. Incarcerated 120,000 Japanese Americans, Trauma and Scars Still Remain", Smithsonian Magazine (February 11, 2022)
  • Susan H. Kamei, When Can We Go Back to America? Voices of Japanese American Incarceration during WWII (Simon & Schuster, 2022).
  • Koji Lau-Ozawa, "Dissonant Memories of Japanese American Incarceration", International Journal of Heritage Studies 25, no. 7 (2019): 656–670
  • Noreen Naseem Rodriguez, "'But They Didn’t Do Nothin' Wrong!' Teaching about Japanese-American Incarceration", Social Studies and the Young Learner 30, no. 2 (November/December 2017): 17–23
  • Mira Shimabukuro, Relocating Authority: Japanese Americans Writing to Redress Mass Incarceration (University Press of Colorado, 2016)
"Incarceration" is a valid, widely used, nonpartisan term for describing this history. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:54, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Detailed mention of Himei's work was to illustrate the poor quality of the scholarship of this reference. Does this work have any favourable reviews by any serious academic historians? Just scanning the titles of the references you list above, it is easy to believe that all have some degree of partisan slant. To what extent do any of them meet the standards of WP:HISTRS – this is a genuine question.
The point that I am trying to make is that "internment" is also a valid description of detention without trial, and happens to appear in the name of the articl.. It seems a very strange ambition for this article to want to limit the use of the word to a narrower definition than exists in both general and legal English. Yes, there is an informational point for the article to cover that some viewpoints say that US citizens cannot be "interned" – the existence of that point of view is a fact. But if the article as a whole adopts that position, I suggest there is a problem with WP:NPOV. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 14:35, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The list of sources are all to books from reputed publishers and articles in reputed periodicals. University presses and peer reviewed articles (the only non-peer reviewed article in my list was from the reputed Smithsonian Magazine) are considered a gold standard as reliable sources: academic and peer-reviewed publications, scholarly monographs, and textbooks are usually the most reliable sources. And as WP:HISTRS states, Historical articles on Wikipedia should use scholarly works where possible. Per the essay, scholarly historical sources include books from university presses like the University of Illinois Press and the University of North Carolina Press and articles from peer-reviewed academic periodicals. As that is an essay which can be persuasive but not necessarily comprehensive, universal, or binding, I'd point out that positively-reviewed publications from major, reputed publishers can also be reliable sources.
For a more detailed consideration of, for example, Kamei's When Can We Go Back to America?: it was published by Simon & Schuster, not a university press but one of the "big five" publishers in the United States. The review outlets Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal glowingly reviewed the book.
For me to find persuasive your claim that the sources I listed all have some degree of partisan slant that makes them unreliable for the subject and for this claim that "incarceration" is the better word to use would require a much more detailed analysis of the sources and awareness of the historiography of WWII-era Japanese American incarceration in the United States than merely scanning the titles. It's hard to escape the impression that your reason for considering these sources "partisan" is merely because they imply that the detention of citizens without intent to conduct a trial may be objectionable.
You ask about if Himel's work is favorably reviewed by serious academic historians. I'll first point out that using the term incarceration doesn't depend on Himel's article. Numerous scholars in the past 20 years have increasingly favored the term incarceration over internment, both after and before Himel's article, as the list in my above comment demonstrates Second, journal articles don't generally get reviews the way books do (in all my years in academic history, reviews of articles are uncommon, except in the occasional major synthetic review of a broad historiographical trend). But that said, paying attention to how a work is cited can be instructive. If a work is cited favorably in other articles, if other articles treat it as good scholarship, that is a good way to know the quality of a work:
  • Jeffrey Frantz-Burton, "Excavating Legacy: Community Archaeology at a Japanese American World War II Incarceration Site", Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage 4, no. 3 (2017): 160–172, here 161, favorably cites Himel and states that the articles uses the term ‘incarceree’ or ‘prisoner’ to refer to confined individuals and state that The term ‘internment’ did not, and still does not, apply to mass incarceration of a country’s own citizens, or incarceration of immigrants who are not suspected of wanting to aid the enemy. The Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage is published by Taylor & Francis, a well-reputed academic publisher, and Frantz-Burton works for the National Park Service at the Manzanar National Historic Site.
  • April Kamp-Whittaker, "World War II Japanese American Internment in the American Southwest", KIVA: Journal of Southwestern Anthropology and History 86, 2 (2020): 223–232, here 224, despite its title (WP:HEADLINE usually talks about newspapers but may apply here) in the body favorably cites Himel to state that "More appropriate terms such as forced removal, temporary detention center, incarceration center, or concentration camp should be used". KIVA is published by Taylor & Francis, a well-reputed academic publisher, and Kamp-Whittaker works for California State University—Chico. (Though by way of aside my impression is that the balance of scholarship tends to demur from the term concentration camp in favor of incarceration.)
  • Hanako Wakatsuki, in the reviews section of the Public Historian 43, no. 3 (April 2021): 90–93, here 91, favorably cites Himel to describe "internment" or "evacuated" as euphemistic terms and elaborate that two-thirds of Japanese Americans who were incarcerated were American born citizens. The Public Historian journal is published by University of California Press, an academic university press, and Wakatsuki works for the National Park Service.
While I recognize your thoughts about Himel's article, I think it's appropriate to give more weight to evaluations by academically published sources. WP:OR isn't prohibited on talk pages, but I think it's understandable that I'm more inclined to the assessments of current academic sources. Also, you bring up Operation Demetrius, but that's both a different country and entails the complexity of the United Kingdom being a "nation of nations" rather than a singular national regime as the United States was during WWII (and is); I'm not inclined to trust the language and summarization in one Wikipedia article about sans-trial detention somewhere else over the balance of current academic scholarship about the topic at hand: detention of Japanese Americans in the United States during WWII.
I think adopting language contrary to the balance of current academic scholarship ("internment") and excluding language that the balance of current academic scholarship uses ("incarceration") would be a stronger violation of WP:NPOV. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 20:24, 3 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Internment" is definitely not universally rejected in academia, however. See these recent academic articles that use the term "internment" without comment:
In addition, there are many (including myself) who do not see "internment" as a euphemistic term. Your discussion of Operation Demeritus is frankly nonsense.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 22:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • While Homisarchik, Sen, and Velez (2022) uses "internment" in the title, the first footnote on the first page comments on the term "internment" explaining that While the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II has historically been referred to as "internment", we use the terms "incarceration", "imprisonment", and "detainment" throughout this article in recognition of the fact that the majority of Japanese American people forcibly relocated and imprisoned during this period were US citizens and thus could not be "interns". This article from a high-quality, reputed peer-reviewed academic periodical (the Journal of Politics) strengthens the case for favoring the word incarceration
  • Yohitake (2023) is a senior thesis written by an undergraduate student, not scholarship published in a peer reviewed periodical or with an academic or major press, and also uses the term "incarceration" without comment: the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans (3)
  • Arellano-Bover (2019) is a working paper and apparently not yet published. The paper does use both "internment" and "incarceration".
  • Ward (2021) does use "internment" mostly without comment, though the article is also more focused on immigration detention (and Japanese American citizens were not immigrants) and was published in a student-edited law review.
  • Taylor (2020) was published in the West Virginia University Historical Review which is an undergraduate journal for BA students. This is a great learning experience for the students, but I would not weigh this as strongly as articles in periodicals that scholars further along in their training publish in.
  • Sieber (2020) is a paper for an undergraduate class, not scholarship published in a peer reviewed periodical or with an academic or major press.
  • Tsui-yu Lee (2020) does use both "internment" and "incarceration": The disfranchise- ment inherent in the massive incarceration euphemized as “relocation” markedly affected adults and children (48).
  • Pearsall (2022) is an unpublished dissertation. While dissertations are not wholly unusable, per WP:SCHOLARSHIP: can be used but care should be exercised. It is probably best to prefer and prioritize published scholarship.
  • Schmitz (2021) is the strongest example in your list (though also borders on being the only example), as an academic monograph published with a university press. This is a good example of internment not being universally rejected in academia. That said, the example I have listed make quite clear that incarceration instead of internment isn't universally rejected either and, indeed, is very popular in academic scholarship.
  • Okazaki (2021) is a BA thesis, not scholarship published in a peer reviewed periodical or with an academic or major press.
We're both at liberty to have our own opinions about the euphemisticness or not of the term internment. For the purposes of Wikipedia, following the balance of current scholarship that increasingly favors incarceration—and as such mostly using the word incarceration while noting the word internment in the article (as the current version does) seems like good practice that comports with WP:RS and WP:NPOV. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:19, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any attempt to differentiate between sources written by academic historians (per WP:HISTRS) and people who are not. This article is about a historical event – so that principle should be given some priority. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:28, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Although WP:HISTRS is a non-policy essay, it's a persuasive essay, and this is good to raise. Multiple of the authors of the sources that Eldomtom2 listed (the surnames and years of publication are given in my review of Eldomtom2's list of sources) aren't academic historians. Four were or very recently had been BA students at the time of publication/release (Yoshitake, Taylor, Sieber, Okazaki), and Caleb Ward was a third-year law student at the time of his paper's publication. The lack of academic historian authorship among Eldomtom2's list of sources to warrant the use of internment over incarceration is another reason I can't support that proposal. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:41, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But you do not seem to want to present the credentials of the authors of the sources on the other side of the argument. Note that someone from a law school is not generally going to be considered an academic historian. Lawyers in particular tend to make a partisan argument. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:46, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am quite happy to provide credentials for authors that I've brought up on this talk page, having done so for a few of them (Frantz-Burton, Kamp-Whittaker, and Wakatsuki).
Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 00:26, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Homisarchik, Sen, and Velez (2022) does not solely use "incarceration" in the text("..,leverage additional information about internment length and location..." "The WRA recorded detailed information about internees, including name, age, gender, preinternment address..." "Our findings suggest that this unjust internment"). The same, of course, for Arellano-Bover (2019) and Tsui-yu Lee (2020). The point is that the idea that "internment" is wholly unused in modern scholarship is inaccurate. In addition, WP:NPOV does not mandate that we use the same language our sources do - indeed it specifically mandates that we use a neutral tone. Therefore, personal opinions on the nature of terminology are relevant - or at least, sources on a topic cannot be the sole arbiter of the terminology used.
On ThoughtIdRetired - WP:HISTRS is not only not policy, it nowhere states that historians are to be privileged over other academic sources.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 00:17, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Taking a quick look at a publications search, I have found:

  • [3] with Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment (Princeton University Press) (Winner of the 2006 Robert G. Athearn Award, Western History Association)
  • Stacey Lynn Camp, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Associate Director of the Campus Archaeology Program, MSU, Landscapes of Japanese Internment [4]
  • Japanese American Internment [5] As far as I can tell, the authors are lawyers and are happy to use the word "internment".
  • A clue to how history is expected to be taught in American schools:[6], again, clearly using "internment".

The point is that it is very easy to find use of "internment" by academic historians, lawyers and educators. I only took a few moments to search whilst my breakfast was cooking. There is plenty more out there. ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 09:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • Your first example in the immediately above post, Hayashi's 2006 Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment is an offline source that I'm not able to access through web previews. I was thinking of stopping by a library today anyway, so if I have time I'll take a look and do a more thorough review of the source when I can see it. As the next source demonstrates, sources that use "internment" in the title don't always keep using it in the body text (WP:HEADLINE doesn't apply one-to-one but has a vibe that can help us grapple with how titles sometimes vary from texts).
  • Your second example in the post, Stacey Lynn Camp's "Landscapes of Japanese Internment", Historical Archaeology 50, no. 1 (2016): 169–186 is an example that actually supports the use of the term "incarceration" for camps that detained citizens: For most scholars (Okamura 1982; Hirabayashi 1994), "internment" is considered to be one of the many inaccurate euphemisms the U.S. government employed to downplay the imprisonment of innocent Japanese American citizens. With the exception of camps that fit the legal definition of "internment camp," the term "internment" will thus be replaced with "incarceration camp" for the remainder of this article. (170, bolding added)
  • Your third example in the post, Aitken & Aitken, "Japanese American Internment", Litigation 37, no. 2 (Winter 2011): 59–62 does use the word "internment camp" uncritically. It was also published before Yoshinori's 2016 law journal that spread the use of the phrase "incarceration camp" (though did not originate it, as examples that predate his essay demonstrate), so that may be part of why (Yoshinori, publishing in a law journal, brought the case for "incarceration" more strongly into legal circles, where before it seems to have been in academic circles, from the examples I've listed on this page). Finally, Litigation is a journal for litigation, not a journal for history. While WP:HISTRS is an essay, not a policy, it's a persuasive essay that encourages us to prioritize sources published in venues for academic history. (The results of the scholarly process appear in numerous forms, such as Research articles by historians in scholarly peer-reviewed journals.)
  • Your fourth example in the post, Stephanie Reitzig, "'By the Code of Humanity': Ralph Carr Takes a Stand for Japanese-American Rights in World War II", History Teacher 51. no. 1 (November 2017): 105–122, is an essay written by a high schooler from Niwot High School in Longmont, Colorado, as identified on the first page of the article (105). While congratulations are due to Reitzig for winning the National History Day contest in 2017 (and apparently receiving as her prize publication in the History Teacher), this isn't exactly what I'd call scholarship written by a professional historian/humanities scholar/social scientist.
This is the second time a list of sources presented as uncritical uses of "internment" shrank under further examination into a couple of applicable sources and noticeably included a source that explicitly encourages preferring the phrases "incarceration" and "incarceration camp" and says that most scholars consider "internment" an unsuitable euphemism. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 18:55, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You cannot turn an essay into policy simply by calling it "persuasive". In addition, I would like to stress that academic historians are under no obligation to be objective. We are. Therefore, we cannot simply say "well that's what the sources call it". For a non-terminology example, a lot of the sources discussed explicitly call internment/incarceration unjust, but of course Wikipedia can and should do no such thing.
I would also like to note that whatever your opinions are on the terminology to be used, hopefully we can all agree that the article's name and its contents should be in harmony. At present they are not.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 19:11, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really understand what the first paragraph of the above comment is trying to convey. The work of historians is an evidence-based enterprise in which scholars strive to convey what is truthful. This comment seems to be implicitly undermining the reliability of historical scholarship along with claiming Wikipedians are better judges of accuracy and fact than historians are. Whether or not that is true, Wikipedia is not a venue for our original research.
What Wikipedia policies oblige us to do is present verifiable information with a neutral point of view that is informed by reliable sources (the best standard for such being secondary scholarly sources). It is verifiable that a many scholars consider "internment" to be "inaccurate" for describing the detention of U. S. citizens of Japanese descent during World War II, e. g. For most scholars [...] "internment" is considered to be one of the many inaccurate euphemisms the U.S. government employed (Camp 2016, p. 170). Using a term most scholars consider inaccurate doesn't seem more verifiable or more neutral. Accuracy is different from calling the detention "evil" or "unjust". Accuracy can be neutral. Terms like "incarceration" and "detention" aren't partisan, or at the very least aren't more partisan than "internment" (as a wide range of scholars report that internment is a euphemism the U. S. government used to downplay the program—hardly a neutral point of view). Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly, the statement that "the work of historians is an evidence-based enterprise in which scholars strive to convey what is truthful" is irrelevant. WP:NPOV is not about ensuring Wikipedia articles are factually accurate. It is about ensuring they have a neutral viewpoint. An article can wildly violate NPOV while never telling even the slightest untruth. That historians are not required to be objective - in the sense that they are not required to avoid the influence of their subjective feelings - is something that can be very easily proven.
Secondly, it is not OR to describe something in our own words. Indeed copyright requires us to do so. Therefore when deciding what terminology to use about a subject we should not just look at what scholars on the subject have to say (they, after all, are probably not linguistic experts) but rather take a broader view and look at what other sources have to say about the usage of a word, and determine whether or not, for instance, the claim that "internment" is understood as something that can only be done to non-citizens is accurate.
Thirdly, if you deem the use of the word "internment" as outright inaccurate, surely you must support a massive rewrite of the Internment article to remove most of its examples?
Fourthly, yes, "accuracy can be neutral". But accurate does not mean neutral.
Fifthly, I would not describe "incarceration" as neutral. Its use over "imprisonment" is nearly always a sign that the speaker disapproves of the action. I would describe "detention" as fairly neutral, but it does not seem to be a particularly popular term in this context (though equally there doesn't seem to be much saying it's inappropriate, either).
Finally, I am unaware of any source claiming that "internment" was a widely used euphemism during WW2. Actual euphemisms, such as "relocation" or "evacuation" are the ones usually cited as being used.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 22:31, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

accuracy of quotes[edit]

Pretty basic question, I was going through some of the article specific into the lead up to internment and i was interested in a quote and the source provided was unhelpful. My specific question for the quote specifically under the support and opposition title "White American farmers admitted that their self-interest required the removal of the Japanese." I am looking for the source as the provided on does not link to anything rather simply names a source and when I tried to find the quote i was unable to.

Thanks to whoever can help me, doing some research for a paper and want to be able to fully source this quote if accurate Wintuck2556 (talk) 02:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It cites the Fordham Law Review, did you pull the journal? tedder (talk) 03:29, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the wording was taken from the first full paragraph on page 2307 of the Taslitz paper which can be accessed at the link here.—Myasuda (talk) 03:38, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Internment_of_Japanese_Americans&oldid=1216473921"