I reported and produced this story for 99% Invisible. Avery Trufelman was the editor, and it was mixed by Sharif Youssef, with original music by Swan Real.
A note about this story: we used several different terms to refer to the US government’s incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War 2, including “concentration camp” and “prison camp.” We used these terms interchangeably with “internment camp,” along with related language like “internee” and “evacuation” and “relocation", which were the prevailing terms in public use in the 30’s and 40’s (though “concentration camp” was used by President Roosevelt and others at the time). But these historical terms have insidious implications, and we shouldn’t have used them uncritically in our narration.
Terms like “internment,” “evacuation,” and “relocation” are deceptive euphemisms that were employed by the US government to justify — and downplay the awful reality of — its racist, violent, illegal program of forced removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during World War 2. This terminology has become a largely unquestioned part of mainstream discussion of the war, but it’s inaccurate and dehumanizing, and we shouldn’t use it just because it’s what we’ve been told is acceptable.
It’s crucial that we are more careful about how we talk about this moment in history — for so many reasons, not least of which is the way similar euphemistic language is being used right now, in the US and all over the world, to oil the wheels of violence. I wish we had been more careful in this story, and rejected these terms entirely.
For more on why it matters to use accurate language when talking about this history, and which terms more accurately reflect the reality of the incarceration, see this set of terminology guidelines created by Densho.
Sources:
Michael Blackwood - Isamu Noguchi
Gabriela Burkhalter, Daniela Baumann, Xavier Salle, Vincent Romagny, Sreejata Roy - The Playground Project
Hayden Herrera - Listening to Stone: The Art and Life of Isamu Noguchi
Alexandra Lange - The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids
Shaina Larrivee, María García - Isamu Noguchi: Playscapes
Robert J. Maeda - “Isamu Noguchi: 5-7-A, Poston, Arizona”
Kathleen Massara - “The Japanese-American Artist Who Went to the Camps to Help”
Isamu Noguchi - A Sculptor’s World
Marlene Shigekawa - For the Sake of the Children
Smithsonian Archives of American Art - Oral history interview with Isamu Noguchi, 1973 Nov. 7-Dec. 26
Susan G. Solomon - American Playgrounds: Revitalizing Community Space
The Noguchi Museum - “Self-Interned, 1942: Noguchi in Poston War Relocation Center”