Yellow Dust Abode: The Hawley-Suski Letters, 1942-1945

Author

Roxanne Shirazi, Graduate Center, City University of New YorkFollow

Date of Degree

2-2016

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Stephen Brier

Subject Categories

American Studies | Digital Humanities | History

Keywords

Japanese American internment, Los Angeles, Text Encoding Inititative, digital history

Abstract

On May 6, 1942, Dr. Peter Marie Suski assigned my great-grandfather, Willis M. Hawley, power of attorney to manage his personal affairs when he and his family, along with 120,000 Japanese Americans, were forcibly removed from the Pacific Coast to one of ten U.S. government internment camps. The two men began a regular and frequent correspondence that would continue throughout the war and beyond, producing at least 566 pages of letters between 1942-1960. Dr. Suski and Mr. Hawley wrote as friends, book collectors, and scholars of the Japanese and Chinese languages, and their letters comprise a richly detailed source for biographical and social history. This thesis project uses the TEI schema of XML to encode the letters and identify the topical threads running through them, creating a digital edition that examines the histories of the two men and their correspondence, while considering the ethical implications of digitizing a collection of personal letters.

Recommended Citation

Shirazi, Roxanne, "Yellow Dust Abode: The Hawley-Suski Letters, 1942-1945" (2016). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/699