UCLA

This project investigates the carceral connections between two groups—Japanese Americans incarcerated in U.S. concentration camps during World War II and Vietnamese refugees following the end of the Vietnam War. By looking at the wartime logic of these U.S. racialized wars in Asia that extended domestically to impact the Japanese American incarcerees and Vietnamese refugees, my research analyzes these camps as transitional spaces of racialization. The lens of food and foodways shows how camp food encoded the dehumanization of these racialized groups of people.

Centering camp survivor stories helps elucidate the lasting impact of the carceral experience and the ways that memories of food can become tied to traumatic experiences. As counternarratives to linear progressive narratives of history, memories of food and foodways retain the potency of these alienating experiences and demonstrate how incarcerees and refugees asserted their agency through food inventiveness and protests to maintain their humanity.