Uprooted: Gardening and Landscaping During the Japanese American Internment

Gardens constitute a nexus between culture and constructed nature. For diaspora communities, they often stand as material reflections of the process of cultural continuity and assimilation. In the case of forced immigrants, such as the incarceration of roughly 120,000 Nikkei (Japanese Americans) during World War II, the degree to which they were able to reconstruct features of the gardens of their homelands is particularly instructive. Using primary sources in public archives, we investigate how interned Nikkei used gardening to endure their incarceration and to recultivate their traditional relationships with nature. For Nikkei internees, gardens provided a wealth of material and psychological benefits. Because the camps were typically at locations largely devoid of vegetation, gardens provided a means to making their forced incarceration in hostile landscapes more habitable. Most importantly, because camp gardens were explicit celebrations of Japanese heritage, they constituted subtle acts of political resistance.