“Between two cultures and two separate times”: here, home, and identity in the writing of the Japanese American Internment

This thesis introduces the original concept of here, developed as a critical lens to examine literature written in response to the Japanese American internment during World War II. Here refers to a metaphysical location in which individuals feel displaced and unwelcome due to perceived foreignness, fractured identity, and social exclusion. This state arises when an expected sense of belonging or home is not met. Here exists in contrast to home, which represents an individual’s imagined or idealised place of comfort and acceptance. Using specific literature that covers a comprehensive timeline of the Japanese American experience throughout World War II and the Japanese Internment in the United States of America, this study explores how experiences of relocation, racism, and cultural dislocation shaped individuals’ understandings of identity and belonging. The primary texts examined include The Buddha in the Attic and When the Emperor Was Divine by Julie Otsuka, Midnight in Broad Daylight by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Only What We Could Carry edited by Lawson Fusao Inada, Patricia Wakida, and William Hohri, and No-No Boy by John Okada. These texts span genres such as biography, memoir, poetry, and anthology. Through close reading and comparative analysis, the thesis applies here as a conceptual lens to examine how these forms represent psychological and cultural dislocation. Drawing on interdisciplinary frameworks from diaspora studies, sociology, geography, and literary theory, including narrative form, memory studies, and theories of collective voice and testimonial literature, the thesis argues that here provides a new critical vocabulary for analysing the intersections of trauma, identity, and belonging. The formal structures, voices, and stylistic strategies of each work are integral to understanding how here is constructed and expressed. This thesis offers here as a valuable tool for interpreting displacement shaped by historical injustice.