ry. The result was a sequence of contestingstories, from tales of frontier progress to the New Deal tragedies, to Malin's and Bon-nifield's stories of local resistance in the face of a hostile environment and bureau-cracy, to Worster's tragedy of environmental crisis and capitalist self-destru

just what is a narrativ

For Worster, the refusal to recognize natural limits is one of the defining charac-teristics of a capitalist ethos and economy. He is therefore drawn to a narrative inwhich the same facts that betokened progress for Webb and Malin become signsof declension and of the compounding contradictions of capitalist expansion.

The landscape was difficult but ulti-mately benign for people who could learn to thrive upon it. Their chief problemwas less a hostile nature than a hostile government. The narrative echoes Malin'sscenic landscape but gains a different kind of ideological force when placed at thehistorical moment of its narration - in the waning years of the Carter administrationjust prior to Ronald Reagan's triumphant election as presid

The Dust Bowl had oc-curred because people had been telling themselves the wrong s

basically a happystor

propose toexamine the role of narrative in environmental history by returning to the GreatPlains to survey the ways historians have told that region's past. What I offer herewill not be a comprehensive historiography, since my choice of texts is eclectic andI will ignore many major works. Rather, I will use a handful of Great Plains historiesto explore the much vexed problems that narrative poses for all histor

nd we allone hand, a fundamental premise of my field is thatwork of relationships, processes, and systems that atural. To such basic historical categories as gender, chistorians would add a theoretical vocabulary in whicmates, and other nonhuman entities become the coaa history not just of people but of the earth itself. Fortive, the importance of the natural world, its objecconcrete ways people affect it in turn are not at issuintellectua

The contributors to thisforum are not instructing us about the Anthropocene and its discon-tents. But with their close attention to the problem of recognition andto forms of narrative that engage both environment and justice, they col-lectively demonstrate a model for engaging this imaginative dilemma,for meeting this challenge.

“Environmentaljustice embraces the principle that all people and communities are en-titled to equal protection of our environmental laws.”

Over a century of coexisting with wildelephants, residents have developed varieties of earlywarning systems: strong smell of elephant dung andurine, and more recently, cellphone activated warnings.When a herd approaches, outside operations (includingharvest) stop.

The Bengali title is intended for local residents, while theEnglish one appears to be for tourists. Together, the titleshint at an acrimonious global debate in conservation: theBengali one signals rights-based conservation, while theEnglish one underlies fortress conservation, the foundingaim of which was to promote tourism.

To the Gwich’in, therefuge is not a faraway wilderness, but their homeland,a place intimately connected to their lives and culture.

Because the caribou find sustenance on the coastalplain, the Gwich’in, in turn, can derive sustenance—cultural, nutritional, spiritual—from the caribou.

Though carried out for different reasons, the state-sponsored vio-lence against Siberian shamans echoes the long history of fortress con-servation in which Indigenous peoples and knowledge systems wereruthlessly cast out of parks.

Since Collier did not see thecamps as prisons nor the detainees as convicts, he believed that agricultural productivity should be tied tomonetary incentives. With higher wages or prots, they would clear more acres, plant more crops, and workmore eciently

Each camp’s Mess Operations Section had to work with these points and “provide good, wholesome,nutritious, palatable food at a daily cost of not more than 45 cents per day per resident.” The camp farmshelped the WRA meet these goals. For instance, by 1943, Manzanar was asked to spend no more than thirty-one cents per day for food purchased outside the camp and to produce at least fourteen cents’ worth of foodper day per person. When the camp closed, it had never exceeded the thirty-one-cent maximum. In fact,during the summer, it only spent twenty-two to twenty-four cents per day per person on outside goods.From March 1943 to August 1945, it used 68.4 percent of its processed food ration points, 83.5 percent of itspoints for meats, fat, and cheese, and 98.4 percent of its sugar points

If they couldturn desolate land into productive elds, like the white pioneers before them, their connement mightappear all the more undemocratic. The foreboding landscapes of the camps, in short, could become a sourceof power in their wartime struggles for inclusion.

Reed also pointed to the Japanese Americans’ lack of nancial incentive as another source of laborineciency. Similar to John Collier, he argued that detainees “could not become enthusiastic” about theWRA’s pay scale of $12, $16, or $19 per month when wages for farm labor outside the camps ranged from$132 to $164 per month

Nonetheless, urgent moments brought detainees to the farm involuntarily. At the end of June 1943, Ernstpleaded with “every able-bodied resident” at Topaz to help the farm crews to plant the crops. He noted,“We must plant NOW or never!

The desire to make the camps self-supporting also ran up against unforgiving landscapes. While most of thecamps were on land that had been previously farmed or ranched, the WRA’s program was larger and moreambitious. This enlarged scope often amplied the environmental problems.

While the farm only operated for two full years, its yields were not insignicant.

The lack of processing equipment and materials at Manzanar also created food waste. In 1943, one hundredtons of surplus tomatoes were sold to a Southern California cannery due to inadequate canning machineryat the camp

Of the ten camps, Gila River had the most successful agricultural program. During its rst season,farmworkers planted a mixed vegetable crop on 1,289 acres, producing 1,464 tons of food for Gila Riverdetainees and an additional 1,341 tons for other camps.

All told, Topaz ocials purchased 28,279 tons of coal between September 1942 andJune 1943. As of June 30, 1943, they had a 6000-ton stockpile, in part, because of a relatively mild winter.For the scal year 1943, the center received 10,500 tons from the Deer Creek Mine and 14,500 tons fromAmerican Fuel.

Hatate was adamant that “the changing of the name ofthe boilermen to janitor and forcing them to do extra work was unjustiable.” Some detainees believed thatthe WRA was trying to make living conditions intolerable to compel them to leave Minidoka and participatein the relocation program.

As the walkout continued, most detainees directed their anger at the WRA administration. A group ofwomen was so outraged about the lack of hot water that they wrote WRA director Dillon Myer to remind himthat they “were guaranteed to lead a normal life, but as it is now, we cannot live normally without hot waterfor bathing babies, washing and general cleaning, which is absolutely necessary for our daily living.”

Topaz administrators, however, did not seek other workers and continued to recruit detainees. This provedto be a frustrating task.

The assignment of “inferior social status” came with the author’s association of digging ditches for thepipeline with digging graves. This dirty work had long-standing connections to immigrant and nonwhiteworkers in the United States.

ost workers received the middle wage of sixteen dollars permonth. Even in oering the highest wage, Watson reported in April 1944 that he had not been able ll thecrew.

The larger issue was the deteriorating state of themain line between the water tanks and the camp. If it failed, the entire camp would be left without water.

Residents of Topaz are urged toaccept regular assignments on the water line in lieu of their present work. . . . The cooperation of everyresident in camp is hereby solicited, because it will be only through unied eort of all that this problem canbe solved and grave danger to our water supply averted.

“The logical question will be, why place themamong the Indians after all the wrongs that have been done these people? It will be construed as justanother instance of forcing something on to the Indian because he can do nothing about it.” Daiker alsoworried about how Indians might react to Japanese Americans: “The Indian is going to say that they arecitizens in addition to being wards of the government, and that they are giving their young men and theirdollars to help ght the very people we are putting in their midst.” They might also feel the inequity ofliving “under unsatisfactory conditions on a sub-standard basis,” while the government housed, fed, andpossibly paid Japanese Americans a monthly wage

Such associations endured into the war years. While Japanese Americans were being forciblyremoved, they still constituted a health threat—a yellow peril—that continued to dene them as a racialother, unt to be living in the city or its hinterlands

He noted, “Thereseems to be comparatively little concern on the part of any except the council members who have expressedthemselves.

By October 1942, the ten camps were up and running at a total cost of $56 million.

At rst glance, this discussion may appear unremarkable, even inconsequential, but the act of naming canbe an exercise of power.

These challenges undoubtedly limited the farms’ productivity. All told, detainees consumed about $50million worth of food but produced only about 14 percent of this total. Despite this subpar gure, a WRAreport from 1946 concluded that the agricultural program was “a sound investment for the government anda valuable means of preserving the initiative and self-respect of the evacuated people during their enforcedexile from their homes and their normal occupations.

Of the ten camps, Gila River had the most successful agricultural program

Ultimately, Senn concluded that the hog farm was not a public health threat to the city of Los Angeles.Although Van Norman recommended that no further action be taken, he insisted that his employees would“keep constant watch to see that nothing objectionable develops.

While labor and environmental conditions persistently challenged WRA agricultural leaders, they also facedshortages of materials, equipment, and storage facilities.

In an undated chart,agricultural sta delineated crop losses due to “unpreventable causes.” The list included many human-related factors—lack of equipment, labor shortages, late plantings—but it also pointed to environmentalproblems: hot weather, alkali soil, frost, insect damage, and “unadapted” plants

Despite their unfamiliarity with the climate andthe “experimental” nature of their farming, one report explained, they applied their “hard-won skills” andmade vegetables grow on desert land only recently reclaime

Most importantly, the WRA grossly overestimated the available labor supply. Myer assumed that 50percent of the workforce at each camp would be employed in agriculture, which amounted to 25,000 to30,000 people. When it was clear that such a large labor force would not be available, the WRA in 1943shifted its plan for agricultural production, which was to “be limited primarily to the production ofcommodities needed for subsistence.

RA Administrative Instruction No. 14, issued June 23, 1942, noted that, after providing foodfor detainees, the “second objective” of the crop production program was to “grow such products as aremost urgently needed for supplying the armed forces and for sale to or through the Oce of Lend LeaseAdministration to provision the United Nations

he fact that the WRA had to forcethem to work testied to the ecacy of Japanese American tactics, but it also underscored their limitedpower

Ultimately, the WRA had to resort to more coercive measures to secure enough workers to replace thepipelines

. The pipeline crew found itself in need of seventy-ve full-time workers and twenty-ve part-time workers. This huge shortage developed when forty-ve high school boys quit after theirrst day on the job.

merged, in part, because of Utah’s environmental conditions,which corroded the pipes. Detainees denied any responsibility for the repairs, but, much like their Minidokacounterparts, found that their power to resist was circumscribed.

It was up to Japanese Americans to provide the necessary labor to generate the covetedhot water

Your rooms will be warm. Your children and old folks can have a real Christmas andNew Year. Let us have no shortage of coal.”

At Minidoka andTopaz, coal was the fuel of choice, but WRA ocials faced chronic diculties securing an adequate supply.In this instance, labor was not the key problem. Instead, national wartime demands thwarted eorts tomitigate nature and keep the barracks warm

These camps were a far cry from the idyllic planned communitiesthat WRA leaders had envisioned and touted.

Construction did not keep pace with the arrival of detainees at Gila River either. This relocation center wasto consist of two adjoining camps, Canal and Butte, with a total capacity of fteen thousand. However, whenJapanese Americans began moving in on July 20, 1942, there were only accommodations for three thousandpeople at Canal, which had a projected nal capacity of ve thousand.

Construction also included utilities, such as sewage disposal, electrical, and telephonesystems. By October 1942, the ten camps were up and running at a total cost of $56 million

They rstannounced their opposition to Minidoka at the end of April 1942, noting that the water supply wasinadequate to irrigate nearly nineteen thousand acres of undeveloped public land that the WRA planned touse for the camp.

a yellow peri

Itwas accessible, with one weekly train and an “adequate state highway,” but it was not too accessible, as itwas separated from the Pacic Ocean “by the highest mountains in the United States.”

Other WRA ocials were cognizant of the diculties of growing crops at Topaz, but the ease and low costwith which they could obtain the land ultimately trumped these potential challenges.

The WRA emphasized that its chosen sites had other environmental advantages, often ignoringcontradictory evidence.

“adequate supply of irrigation water”was available at Tule Lake and “the full acreage can be irrigated from the present water supply” atMinidoka. Water was needed so that each center could become self-sucient in food production withinone season and put any surplus toward the war. Dillon Myer, who succeeded Eisenhower, even askedSecretary of Agriculture Claude Wickard which crops to grow to make “the greatest contribution to the wareort.

WRA ocials proved far more interested in nding Indian reservations “upon which the Japanese evacueescould be placed and employed in useful work.”