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J APANESE A MERICAN WARTIME EXPERIENCE, T AMOTSU S HIBUTANI AND METHODOLOGICAL INNOVATION, 1942–1978
Author(s) -
INOUYE KAREN M.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.21564
Subject(s) - scholarship , identity (music) , politics , sociology , officer , mainstream , object (grammar) , world war ii , political science , gender studies , law , aesthetics , art , philosophy , linguistics
A case study of how wartime internment reverberated in the life and work of J apanese A merican intellectuals, this essay discusses the career and interests of T amotsu S hibutani, a sociologist who began his training as part of D orothy S waine T homas’ J apanese A merican Evacuation and Resettlement Study ( JERS ). Though recent scholarship has noted some of the ethical problems that attended the use of J apanese A merican participant observers during the war, this essay concentrates instead on how interned intellectuals responded to their double role of both researcher (and intellectual) and object of study. I argue that in the case of S hibutani, his circumstances and identity shaped his scholarship, both as an academic endeavor and a political project. By tracking S hibutani's postwar scholarly activities, I show that his wartime experiences—as an internee, military officer, and participant‐observer—reverberated in his sociological publications long after the war's end.