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This chapter details Kurihara's time in the Moab isolation camp. After their arrest in the wake of the Manzanar revolt, Kurihara and the other members of the Committee of Five were taken to the jail in Bishop, and after a few days, to Lone Pine. Their prosecution was held at bay, however, since WRA officials were able to secure a temporary isolation camp near the town of Moab, Utah. The Moab camp was designed specifically for Nisei, who, as U.S. citizens, could not be transferred to the enemy alien internment camps operated by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Within several months after the Manzanar sixteen had entered the Moab camp, other dissidents arrived from the Gila, Manzanar, and Tule Lake camps. No formal charges were made against any of these men either. Rather, they were sent at the discretion of the WRA camp project directors.

Chapter Four examines the intergenerational dynamics of afterlife, with particular attention to how third- and fourth-generation Nikkei in California have worked to perpetuate key aspects of Nikkei wartime experience. Two case studies form the heart of this chapter: the founding of formal pilgrimages to Manzanar, and the establishment of Fred Korematsu as a key figure in the narrative of incarceration and those who have fought it. In each of these cases, embodiment is crucial for the cultivation of empathetic identification and, thus, agency. Locating historical events with respect to specific sites and individuals, younger generations establish a form of continuing first-person address that demands both identification (as in the case of Korematsu) and imaginative reconstruction (in the case of Manzanar, which remains only in fragments of its original state).

This chapter explores the self-conscious construction of Japanese American identities and the internment experience in the internee-run Manzanar Free Press, which epitomized the camp newspapers independently published in each of the ten relocation centers. In the face of political spectacularization and racist media slander, internee journalists drew attention to a “spectacle-archive,” recording the ambivalent scrutiny imposed upon them from all sides. At the same time, internees staged intercultural performing arts festivals that defied the U.S. government’s mono-Americanist assimilation policy, which pitted second-generation Nisei against their “Japanesey” Issei parents and criminalized displays of Japanese culture. For internee audiences these intercultural performances made visible the contradictions of American racial performativity. Unfortunately, the fact that this performed resistance lives on mainly through embodied memory has meant that progressive narratives of America’s triumph over adversity—epitomized by the U.S. National Park Service’s celebration of internees’ festivity at Manzanar National Historic Site—have appropriated only the “model minority” interpretation of camp performing arts as rehearsals for assimilation and accommodationist endorsements of U.S. policy.

This chapter details Kurihara's incarceration. Kurihara was among the Nikkei assigned to Manzanar, one of ten concentration camps for Nikkei, citizens and alien residents alike. Located at the base of the Sierra Nevada in eastern California, Manzanar was in a desert land of extreme temperatures, high winds, and harsh climate. On June 1, 1942, the army's WCCA, which had been running Manzanar, turned over its administration of the camp to a civilian agency, the War Relocation Authority (WRA). Six months after the WRA took control of Manzanar, the camp experienced a revolt that ended in the death of two innocent young men, shaking the confidence of administrators and the sense of security of the inmates. But long before that explosion of hostility, there had been strong undercurrents of resentment at Manzanar that went back ultimately to the frustrations of Nikkei rooted in the long history of discrimination they had endured, especially in California.

This afterword discusses the three themes that coursed through Kurihara's life: high expectations, his distinctiveness, and a strong sense of justice. Throughout his life, Kurihara maintained high expectations of himself and his country. Meanwhile, the second theme in Kurihara's life was his distinctiveness. Several instances that set Kurihara apart from others of his generation include his conversion to Catholicism at a time when his family members and most Nikkei were Buddhists, while the relatively small numbers of Christians were primarily Protestants. The third theme of Kurihara's life, important because it explains his actions in the concentration camps and his refusal to attempt to regain his citizenship, was his strong sense of justice. He did what he believed was right and expected others, including the government, to do the same. Indeed, Kurihara's sense of justice caused him to protest vigorously and vociferously at Manzanar.

During the war, many natural resources and environmental activities were directly connected to the war effort. This chapter examines how Japanese Americans tried to show their patriotism and prove their loyalty to the United States by engaging with nature in these prescribed ways. These interactions often involved the production of food, with detainees planting victory gardens and working as sugar beet harvesters at a time when farms were experiencing severe labor shortages. In addition, Japanese Americans at Manzanar participated in a program to cultivate and process guayule, a plant that experts believed could address a nationwide rubber shortage. Participating in these activities became expressions of environmental patriotism.