The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp

When Japanese Americans were incarcerated by the federal government during World War II, Japanese American field assistants were sent to conduct ethnographic research within the camps. This book examines the experience of Tamie Tsuchiyama, a doctoral student assigned to the Colorado River Relocation Center at Poston, Arizona. Drawing from her personal letters, fieldnotes, reports, and interviews, Lane Hirabayashi reconstructs the daily life, fieldwork methodology, and politics of residents and researchers at the camp and reveals the pressures that led to Tsuchiyama's resignation, in protest, from the project.Lane Ryo Hirabayashi is the author of 'The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp', published 2000 under ISBN 9780816521463 and ISBN 0816521468.