Saara Kekki: Network Analysis as a Tool to Discovering Community Patterns at a Japanese American Incarceration Camp

My North American Studies dissertation (currently under peer review by an external committee), Life at Heart Mountain: A Dynamic Network Model of a Japanese American Incarceration Community during World War II, explores the networks of Japanese Americans at the Heart Mountain incarceration (internment) camp in Wyoming. Using “big” data collected by US authorities during the war as well as traditional historical sources, I employ network analysis to study how the camp community was structured, how it evolved, and how some of its members expressed their acceptance of or resistance to incarceration.

In my presentation, I will bring forth some visual depictions of the networks and what they tell us about “loyalty,” “assimilation,” and “resistance.”