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

最近，人们对山本久赛的著作进行了很多研究，但至少有两点值得评论。一是她战前的作品很少被讨论，因为它们仍然被埋在历史中。其二，她的全部作品都没有提到太平洋战争，这给日裔美国人，尤其是第二代日裔美国人提出了一个严重的身份问题。通过对山本幸子战前至今约60年的作品进行梳理，可以发现战争对山本幸子产生了强烈的影响，改变了她的身份意识，使她的战前、战时和战后作品呈现出各自的特点。她的战前作品一般可以称为青春文学和笑料文学。但随着日本扩大对中国的侵略，日美关系变得紧张，山本对日本和美国的政治局势都变得更加敏感。就在战前，她宣布自己是美国人。但随着战争的爆发，她开始批评美国，因为她对日裔美国人被大量监禁在集中营感到不满，并对她哥哥作为志愿者服兵役感到悲伤。她还在照片中对战败的日本士兵表示了同情。战争结束后，她继续批评美国的种族偏见，甚至写了一些表达对少数民族的友谊和同情的作品，这是她战时经历的支持，也是20世纪60年代兴起的少数民族运动的刺激。

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.