cae IN 1942, a group of social scientists in the
University of California undertook a study of the evacuation,
detention, and resettlement of the Japanese minority in the United
States. The study was conceptualized on an interdisciplinary basis:
(a) viewed as a sociological problem, it was to include analysis of
the social demography of forced mass migration and voluntary
resettlement, with special reference to the dislocation of habits and
changes of attitudes produced by the experience; (b) viewed as a
study in social anthropology, it would be oriented around the modifications
and changes in the two cultures represented in the group,
first under the impact of constant, enforced association, and later in
the process of dispersal into the โoutside worldโ; (c) viewed as a
study in political science, it would emphasize policy formation and
administrative procedures: the interaction of state and national
political forces, the part played by local government units in determining
both state and national policy, the development of organized
pressures and their result; (d) viewed as a problem in social
psychology, the primary focus would be on the nature of the collective
adjustments made by this population group, following the
crisis of evacuation, to the way of life imposed by the government
during detention and on the extent and kind of institutional reorganization
and individual readjustment following resettlement; (e)
viewed as an economic problem, it would be concerned with the
economic conditions predisposing the formulation of policies, the
economic consequences of the program upon the areas of evacuation
and upon the evacuees themselves, and the governmental
efforts to protect the interests both of the areas and of the classes of
population involved.