Gardens Below the Watchtower: Gardens and Meaning in World War II Japanese American Incarceration Camps

Abstract

Ornamental gardens created by Japanese American inmates in World War II incarceration camps offer new insights into landscape history, theory, and interpretation. This study argues that the camp gardens were continuations of pre-incarceration garden-building traditions, human and cultural responses to the camp landscapes, restorative agents that fostered communal healing, and the results of cultural cohesion and community competition. The camp gardens illustrated and enabled levels of resistance against confinement and the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Appropriation of WRA land was the initial act of resistance. The acts of garden-building often required subversive and illegal activities. The design and form of the gardens helped to redefine Japanese traditions and resisted the WRA’s Americanization regime. Finally, some gardens functioned as political symbols of sedition and non-compliance as well as loyalty and patriotism, and they were often used as staging grounds for political acts. The camp gardens are cultural resources evocative of human agency within landscapes of persecution and racism. This study calls for the preservation and engaging interpretation of the camp gardens in order to help mediate victimization in Japanese American history, to enhance World War II history on the home front, and to enrich our collective understanding of garden-building traditions in the United States.