Bureau of Sociological Research (BSR)

     After the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established, Director Dillon Myer hired John Provinse, an anthropologist, as Chief of Community Management in Washington D.C.  He was the first (of 21) anthropologists employed by the WRA to research the internment camp life and help advise the camp administrators.  

Poston Community Analysts

The Community Analysts were instructed to study the "causes of resistance" to the camp administration.  The Community Analysts who were at Poston:

1. Lieutenant Commander Alexander H. Leighton, Medical Corps, USNR.   In August 1942, Lt Cmdr Alexander H. Leighton, consultant with the Indian Personality and Research Project, headed a laboratory, which was established at the Bureau of Sociological Research. 

He recruited 2 anthropologists, Spicer and Colson, and 15 Japanese Americans, and conducted research on the life within the Poston internment camp. Up until 1945, he was employed as a Special Research Physician for the U.S. Indian Service.  In 1945, he worked as a Social Science Analyst for the U.S. Office of War Information. His book, "The Governing of Men", 1945 is based on his research at the Poston, Arizona internment camp.

2. Edward Holland Spicer. In 1942, he began work as a Community Analyst at the Poston, Arizona internment camp.  He taught introduction to anthropology to the  interested internees.  In 1943,  became Head of the Community Analysis Section of the War Relocation Authority, and moved to Washington, D.C.

3. Elizabeth Colson. From November 1942- September, 1943, she was an Assistant Social Science Analyst, for the War Relocation Authority on the relocation and the internee response at Poston, Arizona.

4. David Heath French and his wife, Katherine (Story) French, served as Relocation Advisers and Community Analysts with the War Relocation Authority, monitoring the conditions at the Japanese internment camps as part of a program to relieve abuses.

The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS)

      The Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement Study (JERS) was established at the University of California, Berkeley in early 1942 and was directed by Dorothy Swaine Thomas.  JERS monitored the sociological, political, economic, and legal issues of the forced mass relocation. The internees who were hired  documented their own and others' experiences, and reported on certain events and everyday life during the stay in the assembly and relocation centers. The extensive reports about camp life was recorded in journals, diaries, and field reports. In addition, the internees compiled case histories, conducted interviews with other internees and the WRA staff, studied group behavior, and performed statistical surveys.

The JERS staff workers at Poston were:

 1. Tamie Tsuchiyama, UC Berkeley doctorate student, who agreed to join the mainlanders  evacuated to Poston block 31.  The authorities had prior notice that she was a JERS researcher, officially employed by the University of California, Berkeley. 

NOTE:  For more information on TamieTsuchiyama, visit:

<http://postoninterneeobituaries.blogspot.com/2011/06/tamie-tsuchiyama-581915-5141984.html>
 

2. Richard S. Nishimoto, a bi-lingual Issei educated at Stanford University, who was interned with his family at Poston block 45-2-C. Initially, he worked with JERS as an assistant to Tamie Tsuchiyama, and about 6 months later, his assignment was enlarged by JERS director, Dorothy S. Thomas.

NOTE:  For more detailed information about Richard S. Nishimoto, visit:

<http://postoninterneeobituaries.blogspot.com/2011/06/richard-shigeaki-nishimoto-1904-1956.html>

 Other (internee) employees: Tom Sasaki, Chica Sugino, Hisako Fujii, Misao Furuta, Iwao Ishino, Mary Kinoshita, June Kushino, Yoshiharu Matsumoto, Florence Mohri, Akiko Nishimoto, Jyuichi Sato, James Sera, Gene Sogioka, George Yamaguchi, Toshio Yatsushiro, and Kazue Uyeno.

Consultants:

1. Conrad M. Arensberg.  He spent one month in the Poston internment camp community conducting field work, with most of the time spent with various council members. 

2. Laura Thompson, financial consultant to the community analysts.

3. Henry W. Smith, fiscal officer. 

Sources:

1. Starn, Orin. Engineering Internment: Anthropologists and the War Relocation Authority. American Ethnologist, Vol. 13, No. 4. (Nov., 1986), pp. 700-720. Available at: http://www.little-yeti.com/violence/readings/Engineering%20Internment%20-%20Anthropologists%20and%20the%20War%20Relocation%20Authority.pdf

2. http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/kh/tf5j49n8kh/files/tf5j49n8kh.pdf

3. Niiya, Brian.  Japanese American history: an A-to-Z reference from 1868 to the present. 

4.  Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo, editor. Inside an American Concentration Camp: Japanese American Resistance at. Poston, Arizona.  Richard S. Nishimoto. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press. 1995.  

Community Analysis Section of the War Relocation Authority (WRA)

      With the onset of World War II, John H. Provinse was selected by Milton Eisenhower as Chief of the Community Services Division of the War Relocation Authority.  The Community Services Division was established as a result of the problems from the evacuation of persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.  A major and immediate problem was the lack of understanding of the evacuees by the majority of the men selected to administer their affairs. 

     John H. Provinse obtained the help of some 25 anthropologists and sociologists, particularly some who had had experience with Japanese and Japanese-Americans. Among those he employed were John F. Embree and his former associate Solon T. Kimball. 

     John H. Provinse and Solon T. Kimball brought into operation a community government organization that gave the evacuees some participation in the management of their affairs.  Provinse and John F. Embree, established a community analysis program. Following somewhat the plan of a "research unit" in the relocation center of Poston, Arizona, where the Bureau of Indian Affairs was in charge,  they assigned a social scientist  in each of the relocation centers as a "Community

Analyst".  The Community Analyst duties were to learn the nature of the developing (imprisoned) communities and to use that knowledge in the better administration of the 10 centers. 

     After Embree resigned, Edward Spicer replaced him and gathered intelligence data on internees (which other sociologists today felt would have been more appropriate for the FBI to undertake).

     The Community Analysis Section became one of the landmarks in the World War  II phase of the development of applied anthropology in the United States

Sources: 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1966.68.4.02a00090/pdf

http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/publications/Scholars/2008.3.pdf

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Note on the Net Project at Poston

 By John F. Embree
October 12, 1942 

A member of the staff at Poston who is in Washington for a few days reports a bad situation arising in regard to the Camouflage Net Project in Poston. 

The project is just being opened and a call has gone out for 900 men to work on it at the WRA rate of $16 a month.

The call is not being answered. The most important reason for this is that there is a labor shortage within Poston due to the number of men who have left to pick sugar beets. Two important incentives used in calling men to work on sugar beets are: (a) Patriotic - i.e. it is necessary to pick these beets because they are necessary to the American war effort. (b) Financial. Workers in the sugar beet fields are paid prevailing wages. 

Now while work in the camouflage net factory is also supposed to be of a patriotic nature, there is a feeling in Poston that the people are being exploited when asked to work on nets for only $16 a month. It is, after all, an outside industry, not a community enterprise. Work in the net project, in the eyes of the community (and of the Community Council) does not help civic life in Poston as does, say, work on the staff of the school, or the agricultural project or the mess halls. Furthermore, to get 900 men at present in Poston would mean taking men away from Poston jobs such as mess halls which are essential to community welfare. 

On the whole the Community Council is opposed to pressures being exerted to suddenly put 900 men on the net project now with the existing labor shortage due to men away harvesting sugar beets. Furthermore, the Poston administration tends to side with the Community Council. 

The present situation is a critical one and can lead to a lot of bad blood. For instance, recently a U.S.E.D. truck brought up a load of net materials and there was no one on hand to unload it. Some evacuees and others were discussing the situation when the Army truck driver walked up to one of the evacuees (a good American who was already employed on a Poston job) and, pointing to him, said threateningly, "This is sabotage" and went on to say that if evacuees didn't turn out voluntarily to work on net projects, the Army would force them to do so. This incident sent a wave of indignation over the evacuees since it carried both a false accusation and a threat based on it. 

This situation calls for some definite decisions soon. And these decisions involve important issues.

1. Whether evacuees are to work on non-community projects for $16 a month while other evacuees go off the project to earn prevailing wages. (In the above situation, both jobs are "war" jobs.) 
2. Whether the Army does or does not have authority within a WRA project.
3. Whether it is wise to start any industrial project in a center on such a large scale as to require 900 employees (and in this case 900 male citizens) which means a high percent from a special group.
4. Whether outside work or inside work is to have precedence. This involves the whole WRA relocation program of gradually reducing the population of the centers which in turn involves the question of whether we wish to set up permanent Japanese reservations in America, or whether we wish to reabsorb Japanese Americans into American life as an asset rather than a liability.

NOTE: John F. Embree was one of many anthropologists, working for the Community Analysis Section, War Relocation Authority.  He also wrote many articles, including: 

Embree, John F. “Community Analysis—An Example of Anthropology in Government.”

American Anthropologist. Vol. 46, No. 3, July—September 1944.

Source: http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft6580069k&&doc.view=entire_text
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 Dr. Leighton Treats Staff in Outing

     Dr. Leighton, Chief of Public Health and Bureau of Sociological Research of three Poston Centers, treated his entire staff members of Poston I, II, III and their husbands and wives to a Royal Picnic last Wednesday evening down at the vicinity of the Colorado River.

     After some 40 people piled in two trucks had experienced their dusty and bumpy "7 mile ride," they sat down to rest on the cool banks of the river.

     The main menu, courtesy of Dr. Leighton, was the serving of weiners, buns, coffee, peaches and grapes.  Twilight brought in songs, old favorites, college and popular numbers.

Source: 9/11/1942 Poston Chronicles