Kids, don't ever give out personal information over the Internet!

(But yes, I'm in the Phoenix metro area right now. I went to college in Tucson and it was pretty nice...the great thing about Tucson is, you can always say, "At least we're not as X as Phoenix" (insert "hot," "polluted," "congested," or another negative adjective of your choice [img]smile.gif[/img] ).

Anyway, someone should definitely do an Arizona American Girl doll! Arizona doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, at least not in entertainment media. [img]smile.gif[/img]

EDIT: ALTHOUGH, there's apparently a pretty new book called Weedflower that deals with a girl in the AZ internment camps, so maybe CA is better after all.

http://visitmyclass.com/blogs/wenzlo.../26/31239.aspx

Anyway, best of luck, Horsemom, and I'll post if I find any cultural resources...I'll thumb through my old Japanese literature books for clues too. Overall, though, the '40s weren't that long ago, so I assume they'd generally be pretty similar to Japanese-Americans of today, culturally. And Japan really did try to emulate the West in the '20s (started to get more isolationist in the '30s I think) so heavy Western influences would be OK...or not, if you have your heart set on tatami mats in your rooms and such. I'm sure your girl would have a nice kimono, regardless; either robelike or very ornate, long, and ceremonial would probably be fine. But assuming she's American, she'd probably wear Western clothes to school and to parties, etc. In few pictures I found on the Internet, the Japanese and other Asian areas in America looked MORE "Western" then, than they do now. (They looked like Western houses with Asian characters on them, instead of the current trend towards pagoda-style roofs, paper lanterns, etc.) That appearance of assimilation may have been due to the anti-Asian sentiment during the Great Depression; one account I read (don't remember if I linked to it) had a girl saying her mother burned their family's kendo equipment before going to an internment camp, because they didn't want to seem Japanese. [img]frown.gif[/img]

Bad sentiments aside, I think even Japanese people visiting America in the late 1800s wore Western clothes, and businessmen were likely wearing Western clothes even in Japan by the '20s. (Women wore kimono longer; supposedly even today, you can see old women wearing kimono in Japan sometimes. But very "modern" women in Japan in the '20s would've dressed rather like women were dressing in Europe and the US. In the war in Japan, people just wore whatever they could get their hands on, I'm afraid.)

You should be able to find some pictures of '40s era Japanese schoolkids to see if there were any Japanese-style influences on kids' everyday clothing, though you might have to look at books for them. Just like immigrants today, depending on what generation she was, your girl could have fond memories of Japan, or not even know any of the traditions because she's so far removed from them, so you have a lot of leeway.

ONE LAST EDIT HONESTLY: Re: interracial marriage and such, http://www.kqed.org/w/baywindow/othe...mes/index.html says that people as much as 1/16th Japanese were interred; I would take that to imply that the spouse of a Japanese person would NOT be, although I couldn't say for sure, and I'm sure in the wide history of internment, there would have to be at least one instance of a non-Japanese spouse going to a camp. But your internment books/research might be a better way to get your answer than taking my guesses.

I'm almost sure it was illegal for a Japanese person to marry a Caucasian in CA at the time; in 1909 a Japanese man married a non-Japanese woman and so they passed a law in California to keep that from happening again. [img]tongue.gif[/img] I recall stories about mixed-race couples going up north to either Oregon or Washington (I forget which) to marry, though.

<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 21, 2006 02:57 AM: Message edited by: Kenshinchan ]</font>