This study documents the attitudes and perspectives toward Japanese language education of seven “newly-arrived” Japanese immigrants, jp. Shin-issei, who are raising bilingual or multilingual children in New Orleans, Louisiana. The participants of this study consisted of six mothers and one father who speak Japanese to their children at home and act as teachers of this language at the Japanese Weekend School of New Orleans, jp. Nyū Orinzu Nihongo Hoshūkō, a supplementary language school. Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, this thesis has two interrelated objectives: One is to analyze parents’ attitudes toward Japanese language maintenance and show that although the home remains the crucial site for language education, the Japanese School of New Orleans represents a relevant site for the maintenance of the Japanese language and the indoctrination of Japanese cultural values. The second is to explore how these parents connect the process of teaching at and attending the school to a sentiment of diasporic nationalism. This study calls for a renewed ethnographic focus on often ignored —or known by few— immigrant communities in Louisiana by recognizing the presence of Japanese immigrants in this area, their constant efforts to maintain ties and connections to their home country, and their motivations to do so.

This thesis examines the writings of second generation Japanese Canadian women in the newspaper, The New Canadian between 1938 and 1949. Nisei women lived in a dual world containing different messages of appropriate female behaviour. Although there were similarities between Japanese and North American notions of womanhood, female Nisei writers advocated acculturation to the dominant society. In The New Canadian three major themes emerge from their writings that centre around social acceptance. The first theme is prescriptions of masculinity and femininity. They openly advocated popular North American gender roles, deportment, etiquette and courting customs. The second theme concerns the Issei-Nisei relationship and the conflicts that arose over different notions of femininity. The third examines how Nisei women responded to Anglo-Canadian prejudice, by denouncing racism and advocating acculturation to mainstream society. These articles offer one image of how some Nisei women actively defined themselves, their male counterparts and their future roles. These female voices suggest the deep seeded ambivalent feelings many Nisei women had about their dual identity, their Issei parents, and their status in Canadian society. The women in The New Canadian offered one solution to this uncertainty--acculturation. / Graduate

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / The Second World War internment of the West Coast Issei and Nisei remains a tragic moment in American history. It has long been viewed by historians as a singular act of mass social and political pressure to remove a racially constructed social group from the area, but it was carried out by the United States Army under the direction of the War Department. This dissertation studies the formation of the military policy that led to the Second World War internment of Japanese-Americans and the transformation of a reluctant American Army into an agent of a xenophobic West Coast civilian populace through external pressure, poor planning, and false assumptions. This study focuses on several aspects of civil-military relations associated with the Second World War internment of the Issei and Nisei. This includes the history of militancy and mob rule in the West Coast urban landscape and the borders of civil-military relations on the West Coast as they applied to the region’s xenophobic legislative government. Likewise, the relationship between the military and the militia, urban race relations, and the role of intelligence analysis play a central role in determining the distortion of facts, which shaped the American military’s internment policy. Finally, the disconnects between the East and West Coast arms of the federal government and the Justice and War Departments play an equally pivotal role steering the military’s response to the devolving state of affairs on the West Coast in the months following Pearl Harbor, resulting in the internment of over 110,000 Issei and Nisei in the following months.

This thesis analyses the experiences, memories, and events of the World War II mass incarceration of Japanese Americans to determine what changes this traumatic event engendered in the gender roles of Issei and Nisei women. The events of incarceration separated families and broke down traditional societal norms leaving a deeply emotional and psychological scar upon the Japanese American community. Ironically, new opportunities arose for Issei and Nisei women as both a result of the effects of the mass incarceration upon the Japanese American community and because of governmental pressures such as labor shortages and the cost of housing over one hundred thousand prisoners. Issei women stepped into authority roles after the arrests of Japanese American community leaders and, in some cases, asserted their authority as mothers to stay in the United States against their husbands wishes. Nisei women were offered more opportunities in higher education and careers which allowed them to choose if they wanted to pursue an education or a career. These opportunities also allowed women more choices for marriage. While the decision of when to marry during the war years seems split between immediately before, during, and then in the years following the war, there is also a consistent pattern of women waiting to marry until after they had finished their education or worked for a few years. These patterns differ from both Issei and older Nisei women who often married early. World War II and mass incarceration is an extremely painful event that left deep wounds upon the Japanese American community, however it also gave Issei and Nisei women opportunities to choose what roles to fill and when.

M.Tech. (Fashion) / This study is an investigation of Japanese designers, Issey Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo, who are widely regarded as leading innovators in the fashion world (Kawamura 2004:36; Niessen 2003:216; Sudilc 1990:84). Collectively they have been described as avant-garde designers (Sudjic 1990:13; Breward and Gilbert 2006:58), creators of the Japanese fashion revolution in Paris (Kawamura 2005:96), and exponents of anti-fashion design (Kondo 1997:118). These designers defied the prevailing fashion norms and produced clothes referred to as "wearable art" through the use of advanced technology (Leventon 2005:25). While there are volumes of articles crediting them as revolutionary designers over the years, there is limited literature material that clearly articulates what these designers did differently. Various scholars have tried to uncover what it was that Japanese designers brought to international fashion (Koren 1984; Koda 1987; Coleridge 1989; Evans and Thornton 1989), yet none have been conclusive enough to provide the "recipe for success" that Miyake, Kawakubo and Yamamoto have achieved…