Community Memories and Legacies: Cross-Border Stories of Japanese Families in South Texas and Northern Mexico

Estrella’s paper discusses how histories of Japanese labor migration have been recorded, shared, and preserved throughout south Texas and northern Mexico. She argues that the cases of historical and archival preservation of the stories of Japanese communities in Texas and northeastern Mexico exist because of collaborative efforts between states, institutions, community organizations, and/or families. Some of these collaborations have resulted in digital humanities projects that share the histories of Japanese communities to a larger transnational audience. These attempts to preserve the past uncover more than the labor migration circuits that connect the Texas-Mexico border to the Pacific, but also the cultures and memories that have been passed down multiple generations within these Japanese communities. Estrella utilizes historical and ethnographic approaches to analyze oral histories, documents from family collections and institutional archives, and data from participant based observation from meetings and gatherings with Japanese families.