Promises of Democratic Consent and Practices of Citizenship: Reenacting Japanese Internment Camps Memories in Comics Form

Throughout US history, the reaction to political crises, particularly foreign-based ones, has been the repression of individual rights; a cyclical resolution that seems to validate the old claim that ‘history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.’ Indeed, post-9/11 anxiety over immigrants as potential threats to national security, and the debates about the Patriot Act and Muslim Ban involuntarily revived the discussion about the legacy of Japanese Internment: was Executive Order 9066 a mistake not tobe repeated or a legal antecedent to contemporary resolutions? Clearly, the subject of Japanese American Internment taps into an obscure and unreconciled (hi)story in American memory. Hence, it is no surprise to find contemporary comics (a liminal medium)revisiting the Internment experience to comment on the present, questioning America’s promises of democratic consent and practices of citizenship. To discuss contemporary comics about Japanese Internment, the paper debates how (1) the Muslim Ban revived the Korematsucase in public discourses and memory, (2) literature engaged with this historical event and where comics position themselves within that tradition, (3) contemporary graphic narratives use the past to address current issues, and (4) the choice of the medium is somehow problematic. Finally, the paper argues that contemporary neo-internment comics are a visual and textual rhetorical device demanding the expansion of the circle of ‘we’ to promote interethnic forms of solidarity.