Eighty years later: Examining long-term effects of incarceration

A recent study published by West Virginia University researchers in the Journal of Public Economics has found that Japanese American descendants of those held in detention camps during World War II face increased likelihood of reproductive health complications.

Babies born to Japanese American women born up to a decade following the closure of the camps tended to weigh lighter than those of their Japanese American counterparts who did not face detainment. The report also found that Japanese American women who experienced incarceration displayed different marriage patterns than those who did not.

The last of the incarceration camps, Tule Lake Segregation Center, closed in 1946. The camp first opened its doors almost exactly 83 years ago, on May 27, 1942. The new report reminds scientists and historians alike that historical atrocities do not end with the direct victims but instead, weave their way into genetic codes for generations to come.

What is historical/generational trauma?

Historical trauma, also known as generational trauma, is defined by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) as “multigenerational trauma experienced by a specific cultural, racial or ethnic group … related to major events that oppressed a particular group of people because of their status as oppressed.”

The ACF names examples of major historical events that have induced generational trauma, such as enslavement, colonization and forced migration. The term was first coined in reference to the descendents of Holocaust survivors and those incarcerated in Japanese detention camps during the Second World War.

The impacts of generational trauma vary. It can manifest in many forms, including substance abuse, congenital health defects and overall lower quality of life.

How are communities moving forward?

Over eight decades after the last camps closed, communities across the country are confronting this dark period in American history through education, preservation and advocacy. California held the largest number of Japanese and Japanese American detainees, according to the National Park Service.

Minoru Tanimoto, a survivor of the Arboga Incarceration Camp in Northern California’s Yuba County, told ABC10 he is worried about the fate of other populations that have been historically targeted, including Black Americans, Indigenous Americans and Americans descended from immigrants.

Today, the site of the former camp displays portraits of detainees photographed by Clyde Bush, as part of a recent collaboration between Yuba/Sutter Arts and Culture and the Japanese American Citizens League, according to ABC10.

“We have a president now trying to do something about taking citizenship away from people that were offspring of parents that couldn’t become American citizens,” he warned.

In Central California, students at the California Polytechnic Institute – San Luis Obispo recently collaborated with the Yoshida family, who were forcibly relocated from their home on the Central Coast. The students helped excavate, investigate and display findings from the family’s homestead in an oral history project, according to KSBY.

In Los Angeles County’s Terminal Island, many descendants of a once-thriving Japanese American fishing community who were forcibly removed from their homes are contesting a proposal to destroy the last two standing buildings in place of a storage area for containers.

Next month, the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission is set to determine whether the resolution will move to a City Council vote, NBC News reports.

“One of the things they were concerned about was the island memory would disappear over the years,” Paul Hiroshi Boyea, a third-generation Japanese American board member of the Terminal Islanders Association, said to KTLA. “But now, we’re at a point where we need to look back and say, ‘Okay, we got to continue the legacy.’”