Conglomerate infrastructures: ordinary sites used for extraordinary regimes of power

ABSTRACT

Largescale programs require complex and integrated infrastructures to carry out the aims of power. In the case of the WWII mass removal and incarceration of all Japanese Americans living on the west coast of the US, scholars have focused their attention on incarceration camps and landscapes far removed from towns and cities. This article instead examines the wartime civil control stations which were erected for several weeks to several months in 1942 for the purpose of processing and then assembling Japanese Americans in their local areas before their transportation to detention facilities and ultimately incarceration camps. One hundred and twenty-three buildings, banks, theaters, schools, and a range of other facilities were briefly incorporated into a conglomerate infrastructure before returning to their previous uses. Recognizing the hidden and emergent nature of such infrastructures presents a challenge to archaeologists committed to understanding their use in the marginalization of populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical archaeology
• infrastructure
• clastic sites
• Japanese American Incarceration

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Jason De Leon, Ian Hodder, Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal Hana Maruyama, Erin Aoyama, Jane Komori, Jennifer Noji, Vinicius Taguchi, Nicole Sintetos, and the three anonymous reviewers for their comments on various drafts of this article. Their questions and critiques and suggestions made this a much stronger piece. All errors are solely my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Koji Lau-Ozawa

Koji Lau-Ozawa is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. His research focuses on the archaeology of the Gila River Japanese American Incarceration Camp, and on Japanese diaspora. He received his MA (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in Archaeology and Social Anthropology and an MA in Anthropology from San Francisco State University. He has worked in archaeology in Northern California for Stanford Heritage Services and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area since 2009.