Cultivating Trust: Old Timers, New Immigrants, and the Building of a Transnational Community in Postwar Watsonville

Alan Christy
History
UC Santa Cruz

Alice Yang
History
UC Santa Cruz

In a collaboration between historians at UC Santa Cruz, the Watsonville Japanese American Citizen’s League and teachers in Santa Cruz County schools, developed curricular and public outreach materials on the reestablishment of a postwar Japanese American population in Watsonville California through an oral history of returnees from internment camps and new immigrants from Japan. The core theme rested on rebuilding mutual trust in the wake of a war without mercy. Through a network of related individual life histories the rebuilding of one California community in the wake of WWII was founded upon the willingness of some to extend trust towards those who had been recent targets of suspicion. An explicit attempt was made to broaden the narratives of California’s local histories to include a larger transnational story tracing the relationships of old and new immigrants. Through extended interviews with returning Japanese Americans and new immigrants, videos were produced, as well as a book and accessible web archive of unedited materials. The project developed materials that enabled local students and citizens to view postwar Watsonville history as part of an ongoing history of global reconciliation, community alliances, and the defense of immigrant and civil rights.