Japanese internment camps

By Carter Ottele otteleca@grinnell.edu

On May 5, 1942 — as the United States entrenched itself in World War II, as rations spread and as public opinion searched furiously for a scapegoat — the Scarlet & Black ran a four-word headline — “Japanese Students Expected Here.” they see them. They expressed that having control over the scars in their life is empowering, and they believe getting tattoos can be a way to fight against the prejudices surrounding them.

“My tattoos on my shoulder blade and my inner arm accentuate the areas that make me feel more masculine,” Covitz said. “You're inevitably going to have scars in your life, but to have control over them and have a say in the matter is really nice.” health in high school, and that song is just connected to so many different memories,” Brent said.

Brent got that first tattoo in August of 2020, after she turned 18. The same Chicago-based artist did many of her tattoos which range in subject and meaning. Some relate to her beloved summer camp while others were more spontaneous and simply looked cool, according to Brent.

In light of spiraling racial prejudice, the announcement signaled uncertainty about the safety of the forthcoming students. Yet, it also suggested hope — the newcomers, all Japanese-Americans from the West Coast, would have been taken “to concentration camps unless they left the coast by the end of this week.” For the three students mentioned in the article, education in the unfamiliar, potentially hostile Iowan prairie remained the only alternative to incarceration.

If anyone ever suggests you have to trade quality for quantity, they've never met Ruby Brent `25, owner of nearly a dozen individual tattoos. Brent’s favorite is of an iris on her shoulder blade, a reference to the album cover of her favorite song, “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls.

“It’s still my favorite song 100%, but I struggled a lot with my mental

Kade Dolphin `24 has always been thoughtful about what tattoo he would get — when spring break of his sophomore year came around, he decided to take the leap with some friends. He returned to campus sporting a tattoo of a wave enclosed by a triangle shape.

“I was gonna go get a tattoo with some friends, and I had like a week to figure out what I want, what are my hobbies, what I like to do,” Dolphin said. “I’ve been swimming since I was like three or four, and I wanted something with water.”

Dolphin’s lifelong affinity for swimming played a role in his decision as he wanted his first tattoo to represent something meaningful to him. He found inspiration for the tattoo in an episode from the fourth season of a television show called “The Good Place,” where life is compared to a wave that crashes and returns to the ocean.

When Dolphin’s group of friends went to Champaign, Illinois, they found a tattoo artist who was able to ink everything up the following day.

“I would say most of them have been spontaneous, where I don't really know what I want,” Brent said. “Then, one day, it just hits me, and that’s what I’m doing. It’s just like a single moment where that’s the tattoo that I want.”

Brent sees her tattoos as a way of putting her own artwork on her body, and she cherishes the journey that each tattoo represents. She is currently working on her sticker sleeve and plans to tie them all together with a background once she has enough money.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 9066 three months earlier. This order gave the Secretary of War power to “prescribe military areas” on American soil — in other words, to expel civilians from their homes. In practice, the military removed Japanese-Americans living on the West Coast and forced them into “relocation camps.” The U.S. government justified this incarceration with the unfounded, racist assumption that Japanese-Americans would collaborate with Japan during the war.

The executive order spurred civil rights groups into action.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization, secured a legal carve-out for college students to attend classes inland. According to Daniel Kaiser, professor emeritus of history, Joseph Conard `35 was a “local official” for the AFSC whose uncle, Henry Conard, served as Grinnell’s dean of faculty. The younger Conard urged his uncle to work with the AFSC and accept a limited number of high-achieving Japanese-American students. Henry Conard agreed.

Japanese-American students when obtaining her master’s degree, described the promise and precarity of the situation. While most participants were “really grateful” and “eager to continue their education,” many dropped out. Financial concerns motivated some. Others, Ng continued, struggled with the “onus put on them to show that they were integrating into society.” Indeed, the AFSC encouraged Japanese-American students to avoid congregating with other participants in order to foster the image of racial integration. The country as a whole broadly supported Executive Order 9066. William Kiyasu `44 remembered being advised “not to enter town on weekend nights” for fear of violence from townspeople. Kiyasu remarked that after one ugly encounter, “it was a good thing [he] had a bike.”

Who decides which stories are amplified and which stories gather cobwebs?

Meanwhile, other Grinnell students welcomed the newcomers with open arms. George Carroll `02 spoke with several of the participants in his 2002 research project, “Japanese-American Student Relocation: The Grinnell College Experience.” None recounted any moments of blatant prejudice from Grinnell students.

However, the relative warmth of Grinnell’s reception comes with a caveat — it was still the

U.S. in the 1940s. For instance, Conard heralded the incoming students as “the superior type,” possessing “the refined grace of the true Japanese.” Later, when the Iowa Senate proposed preventing Japanese-American students from attending college in Iowa, the S&B ran an editorial in protest. The article offered some genuine defenses of their classmates, noting that each Japanese-American student had recently made the president’s honor roll. Yet it also argued that concentration camps would make students “conscious of their race,” and that Grinnell students would prefer remaining ignorant of race. The U.S. government closed the last concentration camps in 1946. Over those 4 years, Kaiser found that at least 13 students escaped imprisonment by enrolling at the College, including 6 who graduated. After that, Asian-American student enrollment plummeted for several decades. These students’ stories grew obscure and unknown to most Grinnell College students.

Grinnell should be proud of their involvement, but let's tell the full story.

Laura Ng Professor of anthropology

Who decides which stories are amplified and which stories gather cobwebs? In this case, only a few sources directly talk about Grinnell’s experience during the war. The most comprehensive source comes from a student, Carroll, who had a personal interest as both a grandchild of concentration camp victims and a Grinnell College history major. Ng had already completed graduate-level research on the topic before working at the College. Kaiser was inspired by Dan Ogata, a local Presbyterian pastor of Japanese descent. None of them encountered the story as a well-known fact already enshrined in the collective memory.

The next step, then, is to reinforce the legacy of these students, to make visible their successes and sacrifices. As Ng declared, “Grinnell should be proud of their involvement, but let’s tell the full story.”

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but Dolphin said that he couldn’t be happier with the outcome. He said that the tattoo serves as a reminder to live life like a wave, embracing the highs and lows and going with the flow.

“I liked that metaphor and liked that analogy just because it felt meaningful, and one way for me to live my life is to live as a wave.” Dolphin shared.

So on May 8, Barbara Takahashi, William Kiyasu and Akiko Hosoi arrived at the Grinnell train depot. Hisaji Sakai disembarked at 3:00 a.m. two days later. He would later remember that “the entire freshman class was at the station to welcome [him].” Living in an environment with virtually no other Japanese-Americans, these students experienced a blend of hospitality, well-intentioned ignorance and outright racism. Laura Ng, professor of anthropology, who researched an oral history about relocated

Ekta Shaikh `24 and Emma Schaefer `23 awarded travel fellowships

By Claire Giannosa giannosa@grinnell.edu

Emma Schaefer `23 and Ekta

Shaikh `24 have recently become the recipients of the Watson Fellowship and the Fischlowitz Travel Fellowship, respectively. The Fischlowitz Fellowship allows Grinnell College international students to pursue independent travel in the United States, and the Watson Fellowship grants graduating fourth-year students nationwide the opportunity to travel outside of the U.S. for one year. Both fellowships emphasize the theme of exploration for their recipients to fully dive into the project of their choice.

Fellowships are typically funded opportunities that enable students or recent graduates to travel for a short period of time, focused on their personal, academic or career goals.

Ann Landstrom, assistant dean and director of global fellowships and awards, mentors, advises and helps students with their Global Fellowship applications.

Landstrom described the Watson Fellowship as “a project that is personally connected to you in which you have the inspiration and the passion to keep going no matter what challenges might come forth for you.” Watson recipients must navigate their project and budget independently, traveling to multiple new countries.

According to Landstrom, even completing the application process equips students with “skills that are fundamental for most everything [they’re] going to do in life,” including interviewing, writing grants and proposals, requesting application letters and networking abroad.

Schaefer’s project, titled “Listening at Dawn: Music That Heals the Planet,” is about the connection between music and environmental justice. Throughout her journeys to seven different countries, Schaefer said she wants to think about how “music can help empower people related to climate change and help people sustain their culture.”

She talked about her tentative plans for each country she will visit, mapping out her travels to Switzerland, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates, India, New Zealand, Chile and the U.K. She plans to interact with the natural landscape through volunteer work as well as listen to and collaborate with musicians who write about climate justice and sustainability.

“Part of this project is thinking about how singing songs about nature helps people connect to it in the first place and really have a care for it, thinking about how music really drives that,” Schaefer said.

A key component of her Watson Fellowship year will be waking up every day at dawn to sit outside.

“Whether I’m in a city or a rural area, I’ll be listening to the birds, or the construction or just the people walking by,” Schaefer said. “The period of time that dawn exists in can be a symbolic and transformational time.”

In her project titled “Art, History and Performance: Seeking the South Asian Collective,” Shaikh seeks to explore themes of identity and belonging by visiting museums and exhibitions featuring South Asian art around the United States.

As an anthropology and gender, women’s and sexuality studies major, Shaikh said her project will look at “what it means for South Asian artists to be away from home and present their work.”