ILLUMINATING MILITARIZED RUPTURE: Four Asian American Community-Based Archives

Abstract

This essay argues for the importance of utilizing a framework of militarized rupture in analyzing the cultural narratives that shape the formations and meanings of many Asian American community-based archives. I focus upon four case studies: Aiko and John "Jack” Herzig’s collection of U.S. government documents regarding the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans; Fred and Dorothy Cordova’s development of the Filipino American National Historical Society and the National Pinoy Archives; the Southeast Asian Archive at the University of California, Irvine; and my own research gathering twentieth-century Indonesian American family materials in an interimperial context.