This exhibit features the correspondence of five Japanese Americans incarcerated in the Merced Assembly Center between May and August of 1942—Kaneji Domoto, Henry Fujita, Ruth Okuye Ihara, Tsuneo Iwata, and Yuki Kamayatsu. Because of their brief and temporary duration, the assembly centers are an overlooked dimension of the broader history of internment. The primary sources included here provide unique insight into the feelings, thoughts, and actions of incarcerated writers in the immediate aftermath of Executive Order 9066 as well as the importance of literacy in early experiences of internment. They also offer insight into local histories of Japanese American internment in Merced and the greater San Joaquin Valley.

The correspondence highlighted in this exhibit underscore the complex and diverse motivations of incarcerated writers in the assembly center. Some corresponded to process their experience, challenge the racial premise of “removal,” and bear witness to the inadequate and inhumane conditions of the camp. Others corresponded to sustain and leverage relationships in order to maintain friendships, access education, retain employment, or secure property and assets they were forced to leave behind, as well as to protest the plunder of those assets. Furthermore, their urgency is legible in the genre conventions and technologies of literacy (for example, Yuki Kamayatsu apologizes for the impersonal nature of her letter, lamenting that she carbon copied many correspondents in her rush to convey conditions in the camp).

It is important to emphasize that the assembly centers controlled and restricted correspondence in several ways, notably by prohibiting correspondence in Japanese as well as between assembly centers, which gives us some insight not only into the regulation of literacy at the assembly centers but also into issues of race and cross-cultural relations in the wake of Executive Order 9066. This is reflected in the correspondence featured here, which is all written in English and primarily to white members of communities left behind and can be read within that context. Additionally, some correspondence received from the Merced Assembly Center was subsequently reported on in local newspapers, highlighting the circulation of this correspondence beyond the intended receiver and raising new questions about the interests of and impacts on white readerships.