Autobiography: Silences in the Politics of Language

• In Event: When What We Know Is Not Enough: Questioning Silences in Educational History

Abstract

In the politically-charged arena of the World War II U.S. concentration camps that held Japanese Americans, what those confined said and wrote, both during their confinement as well as decades after the war, was fraught with emotion and meaning-making. My paper examines a set of autobiographical works of Joseph Kurihara, who was incarcerated during the war. In scrutinizing his body of works, I take note, not only of what he said, but also of what he did not say. In doing so, I weave together three themes: the transmission of the past as an educative force; the politics of language; and the role of the historian in interrogating what is left unsaid.

Kurihara was one of the lead informants in a large research study. As a major dissident in the camps, he was asked if he would pen an autobiography for the research study. Writing his story gave the 50-year-old Kurihara an opportunity to reflect on his past and educate current and future generations about his interpretation of events and the significance of his place in the incarceration experience. As a key player in the research project, Kurihara was very much aware of the historical significance of the incarceration, and he sought to place his mark on the way in which future generations understood this episode.

Related to the study of autobiographical writing is the notion of autobiographical memory—a way for people to define and present themselves, and to structure their ideas about themselves and their communities to themselves and to those around them (Rubin, 1998; Fentress and Wickham, 1992). Memories are “dynamically constructed” (Conway, 1992, p. 169; Rubin, 1999, p. 4); the stories people tell are important for the meanings that they convey (Schacter, 1996, p. 94). In autobiographical memory, issues of self, emotion, goals, and personal meanings intersect (Conway & Rubin, p. 103).

Kurihara’s autobiography demonstrates his understanding of the power of language. My task is to trouble his autobiography, to go beyond the face-value of what he said, with the intent of raising questions about his silences.

Kurihara has been a hero to later generations of Asian Americans. As a historian, I need to eschew preconceived notions, to raise questions, to look beneath and between what was said and unsaid. My aim is to interrogate statements made by those who seek to transmit their interpretations of the past for future generations, to move beyond the explicit evidence before me, “to explore and interpret” “implicit statements” (Charmaz, 2006, pp. 146-48). At the same time, I consider what was unstated, for Kurihara’s experience in the camps was as political as it was personal; in his case, the personal was political (Isenberg, 1992).

Author

• Eileen H. Tamura, University of Hawaii - Manoa