Jennifer Robin Terry

Jennifer Robin Terry, “‘They ‘Used to Tear Around the Campus Like Savages’:  Children’s and Youth’s Activities in the San Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 5, no. 1 (Winter 2012): 87-117.

The actions and reactions of young people under strenuous conditions are the central pillars of Jennifer Robin Terry’s article “‘They ‘Used to Tear Around the Campus Like Savages’:  Children’s and Youth’s Activities in the San Tomas Internment Camp, 1942-1945,” a methodologically innovative and important contribution to the history of childhood and youth.
Terry makes creative and insightful use of a wide range of evidence – from rules and structures to children’s games and food allotment, to shed light upon a neglected area of study:  the place of children and youth in a Japanese internment camp during the Second World War.
Drawing upon both official documents and memoirs, Terry clearly demonstrates young people’s agency in this challenging context, showing that they both influenced and resisted the norms of camp life, even as they were themselves being shaped and governed by the restraints imposed by interned adults and their Japanese captors.  The result is an engagingly written article which keeps children’s lived experiences at the forefront, while shedding important light on the wider intergenerational experience of internment.