This alternative map focuses on the story of Japanese Americans and their relationship to the Japanese language, as well as the great influence on cultural identity that language has. The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II, among every other issue it produced, led to a mass loss of language in the community, not inadvertently. It’s a topic I’ve noticed has surprisingly little coverage.

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In this map, I feature two survivors of the American concentration camps, Masao “Mas” Yamashita and John Tateishi, who discuss their post-camp experience with the Japanese language and their Japanese identity. I felt that using their own words as direct primary sources was more significant than any amount of paraphrasing I could do to begin to expand on the idea that the loss of a cultural language in a community is, in fact, a tragedy. Mas and John’s experiences are unique but not so dissimilar. Both men were imprisoned as young children alongside thousands of others solely for their ethnicity, and subsequently treated as less than even after their release. The world around them taught them to be ashamed of their family’s culture, language, and heritage, and to hide it beneath the guise of a “true American.”

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This map is one that explores power in people through language and culture. Aside from the main content, I support this exploration with questions to provoke critical thinking and make historical connections, as well as a section featuring ways Japanese Americans have reclaimed and continue to reclaim their agency—through learning their language later in life, using appropriate terminology when referring to Japanese American incarceration, and owning their culture and identity.

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After many variations, the final map is in the form of a textbook page. While textbooks are presented as unbiased and reliable and thus have authority over information, they can be riddled with thinly-veiled bias and present false narratives. I took advantage of the authoritative yet opinionated format of a textbook to share my own personal values from an assumed position of power. At the same time, I like to think that this map is a piece of the history textbook I wish I’d had in school, in which the events of Japanese American history are taught justly—or taught at all.