Japanese American Literature and the Pacific War : Hisay Yamamoto's Consciousness of Identity

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Pretty many studies have recently been made of the literature of Hisay Yamamoto, but there are at least two comments to be made on them. One is that very few of her prewar works have been taken up for discussion because they are still buried in history. The other is that no references have been made to her whole literature in terms of the Pacific War, which proposed a serious problem of identity to Japanese Americans, especially to second-generation Japanese Americans.A survey of the works she wrote for about 60 years from before the war till today, reveals that the war made a strong impact on Yamamoto, with the result that she changed her consciousness of identity and that her prewar, wartime and postwar works show their own features. Her prewar works can generally be called a literature of youth and a literature of jokes. But as Japan expanded an invasion in China, which strained Japan-US relations, Yamamoto became more sensitive to political situations both in Japan and in America. She declared her identity as an American just before the war. But with the outbreak of it she became critical of the United States because of her dissatisfaction with a mass incarceration of Japanese Americans into concentration camps and of her grief over her brother's military service as a volunteer. She also showed a pity to defeated Japanese soldiers in a picture. After the war she continued to be critical of racial prejudice in America, and even wrote works of friendship and sympathy with ethnic minorities, supported by her wartime experiences and stimurated by a rising minority movement of the 1960s.