Syllabus: Barbed Wire and Broken Promises

Wednesday, 1:30pm–3:30pm PST

Meeting Dates: November 5, 12

Cal Lutheran Fifty and Better (FAB Program), Online-Zoom Platform and In-Person

Instructor: Jason Hensley, PhD, DMin; Jasonhensley@callutheran.edu

Course Description:

During World War II, the United States incarcerated over one hundred thousand people of Japanese descent. Many of these were imprisoned within California and many of them were citizens. Though the United States has acknowledged this history and even apologized to Japanese Americans for it, it’s still a topic that we rarely examine and discuss. This course will spend time understanding the history of these camps, daily life there, and their perceived role in the war effort. In doing so, it will dive deep into an uncomfortable time, and yet a time that holds many lessons for this country and its future.

Topic Outline/Schedule:

Week 1, October 8: The Context

Week 2, November 12: The Camps

Optional Reading List:

  1. Memoir: Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Years of Infamy (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1976).

  2. Academic: Greg Robinson, By Order of the President (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

  3. Memoir: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston, Farewell to Manzanar (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1973).

  4. Academic: Personal Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1982).

  5. Photojournal: Linda Gordon and Gary Okihiro, Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of Japanese Internment (New York: W.W. Norton, 2006).