The lives of Japanese-Americans in the World War II era

Naomi Thyden, University of Minnesota
Evan Roberts, University of Minnesota
Naoko Muramatsu, University of Illinois, Chicago
Julián Cervera Leonetti, University of Minnesota
Gabriel Schwartz, Drexel University

The unlawful mass-incarceration of Japanese Americans living in West Coast states during World War II has been well-documented, but its long-term effects on individuals who were incarcerated is still not completely understood. Recent advances in methods to link individuals across large population datasets and the release of 1940 and 1950 full count Census data have created an opportunity to study Japanese and Japanese Americans before and after their unlawful mass incarceration. In this paper we use recently-released full-count census data from the censuses of 1940 and 1950, and records of the War Relocation Authority to describe the Japanese population over the World War II era. We use new record-linkage techniques to link individuals and families between the census and WRA sources to examine how individuals were affected by mass incarceration. We highlight the opportunities and challenges involved in linking families from minoritized backgrounds in different forms of administrative record sources. Information on family members can help confirm matches that might otherwise we difficult to make when individual characteristics are insufficient to make a person unique. White administrators unfamiliarity with Japanese names, and the character patterns of Japanese names create distinct challenges from linking groups of European origin in the same era.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 193. A Century of War, Injury and Trauma, 1918-2019