Misread, Illegible, Invisible: Searching for a Vocabulary for Tule Lake
A Descendant of a Japanese American Concentration Camp Survivor Reckons With Wartime Incarceration
Out the front windows of our bus, we could see acres of sun-dried grasses in a hot and arid Northern California summer. On either side of the road: barbed wire fences, like the ones many of our family members spent years behind, surrounded by armed guards and guard towers, living in crowded tar paper barracks with little to no privacy.
“How many of you have been here before, or were here during World War II?” our tour guide asked. A few Japanese Americans—in their 70s and 80s, or even older—raised their …
