SJSU Japanese Student Experience Before WW2 Timeline

Words Matter!
Our terminology: When looking at these events in a historical context, the terminology we use can say a lot. When talking about Japanese Americans, we want to make conscious decisions about the vocabulary we use.

Some examples of the choices we made are:

•  “Exclusion” and “mass removal” instead of “evacuation” and “relocation”
• “Incarceration” instead of Internment
• “Japanese American” instead of “Japanese”.

It’s possible to conclude that many of the SJSU students of Japanese ethnicity were second generation and were born in America and/or were permanent American citizens with had no plans of returning to Japan. The Japanese club also states this in a direct quote from the Spartan Daily. They were American citizens, and because of this, we make sure to use the term Japanese American. To learn more about this terminology we used the site https://densho.org/terminology/ and recommend you check it out too!