Genetics Behind Barbed Wire: Masuo Kodani, Émigré Geneticists, and Wartime Genetics Research at Manzanar Relocation Center

Abstract

This article explores the sociopolitical backdrop of genetics research during the politically turbulent decades of the mid-20th century that saw the persecution, displacement, and relocation of unpopular minorities in both the United States and Europe. It explores how geneticists in the United States accommodated these disruptions through formal and informal émigré networks and how the subsequent war affected their research programs and their lives. It does so by focusing on the career and life of geneticist Masuo Kodani, who, as a Japanese American, found himself conducting unexpected cytogenetics research in Manzanar, a ''relocation center,'' or internment camp, located in the California desert, after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, Kodani's subsequent career continued to be shaped by his experiences as a Japanese American and by the specific skills as a cytogeneticist that he demonstrated at a critical period in the history of 20th-century genetics. His many relocations in search of employment culminated in his work with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission on human chromosomes, for which he is best known.Just today, my best graduate student, Kodani, whom you met here, was removed to what is euphemistically called a Reception Center-in fact a concentration camp.

Human genetics in troubled times and places

“…The war halted this progress, not only in Japan itself, but also in America, where after the Pearl Harbor bombing, Japanese-American citizens were interned in the same way as their European counterparts in Britain, including cytogeneticist Masuo Kodani (1913–1983). The profound consequences on Kodani’s life and career are described by Smocovitis [ 29 ] and the entire internment process appears to have been more inhuman than that in Britain, though several internees, including Kodani, managed to continue valuable cytogenetics research in collaboration with outside scientists. But Japan’s principal role in human genetics has resulted from the terrible blow suffered by the populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the atomic bombs were dropped that ended World War 2.…”

The human autonomous karyotype and the origins of prenatal testing: Children, pregnant women and early Down's syndrome cytogenetics, Madrid 1962–1975

“…The association of such experiments with data recorded in Japan on the biological effects of radiation following the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Beatty, 1991;Lindee, 1994;Smocovitis, 2011) constitutes the background landscape of the history of human genetics during the second half of the twentieth century. Statistically significant data was retrieved through medical care from the late1950s onwards in cytogenetic units in Europe and North America, with chromosomes employed as diagnostic tools.…”