Wonder Woman battles WWII internment of Japanese Americans

This version of Wonder Woman might be better than Gal Gadot's movie Wonder Woman.

IF COMICS are not on your list of reading material, you're missing out on a quiet, but influential, revolution shaping the world view of millions of young readers.

On Friday, (Aug. 25) the same day that Donald Trump signed a memo against recruitment of transgender Americans for the U.S. military, Texas was preparing for Hurricane Howard and on the eve of Women's Equality Day (Aug. 26), DC Comics released Bombshells United, a group of female superheroes in a reimagined alternative universe (in contrast with to the universe where Batman, Superman, and Aquaman and a whole phalanx of male superheroes dominate.)

Marguerite Bennett, one of the most influential writers in the comic books today, has a very simple mission for her stories:

"Women as people - crazy, right?"

This year, the team of super women is tackling the missing chapter in America's history books: The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. 

Indeed, the first story arc of Bombshells United is all about America’s failure to protect the rights of up to 120,000 Japanese/Americans when the federal government imprisoned them in internment camps for the duration of World War II.

In Bennett’s foray into WW II and Japanese American internment, she has cast Cassie Sandsmark and Donna Troy, as second generation Japanese/Americans whose friends and family are being held against their will.

Bennett was inspired to tell this story in Bombshells United after a trip back to her family home. She was flipping through a younger cousin’s history textbook and noticed that the chapter on World War II made no mention of Japanese American internment during the war. Perturbed, she asked to see another cousin’s high school level history textbook and found that that book made no mention of the tragedy, either.

According to Bennett, she felt that the story of the internment camps was being erased from American history. That “inspired these feelings of horror and rage and … motivation, I suppose. If this was the kind of thing that was being ignored and scrubbed out of the story (of World War II) ... if (the war) was being increasingly turned into good guys versus bad guys and one side is completely innocent and never did anything wrong … that needed to be addressed.”

She didn't want to be accused of misappropriating material that should be told by a Japanese American. She felt like she might "overstepping." However, she ultimately felt compelled to use her position as the writer of this deeply popular and historically-based series to “highlight something that should never ever be forgotten or removed from our national narrative.”

Marguerite Bennett 

Initially, Bennett expressed some reservations about whether she was the right person to tell this particular story. She said that she felt like she might be “overstepping.” However, she ultimately felt compelled to use her position as the writer of this deeply popular and historically-based series to “highlight something that should never ever be forgotten or removed from our national narrative.”

So, Bennett did a whole slew of research, talked to Asian/Americans writers and historians, read several novels about that era and visited Manzanar when she talked to some of the volunteers and survivors.

She will include a reading list of source materials so anybody who wants to learn more about this neglected chapter in American history can do so. She emphasizes that in her comic book, it is the Japanese/American community themselves who seek Wonder Woman as an ally. “I wanted to avoid a white savior thing at all costs, so I hope the power dynamics are very clear about who’s calling the shots in this story.”

Bennett said in a comicbook.com interview, “Japanese Internment needed to be addressed and kept current, especially in discussions of immigration policy and … you know, just watching history repeat itself.” Indeed, in the time between Bombshells‘ launch and now, it looks like America is heading towards repeating the same mistakes made in the past. When Donald Trump got elected as 45, Bennett began to see the whole Bombshells and Bombshells United in a new light.

While Bennett wants the comic book to be entertaining and fun, she also hopes the book proves to be an “inspiring” opportunity to learn about the history of the world – both the good and the bad. She wants readers to understand that while they may not necessarily ever have to fight an alien space god or some all-conquering evil entity, they still “have the chance to make a difference.”

'Bombshell United' super heroines

Besides  telling the story of Japanese/American Internment to a whole new generation, Bennett is able to portray a universe where women are in charge of their own stories. “I didn’t want it to be a story where (the premise was) ‘oh all the men are off and away, so I guess the women will have to do something,'” Bennett explained.

"From the start, this was an alternate history, so I didn’t want the characters spit upon or trodden under foot for the sake of selling a retro vibe," said Bennett. "From the very beginning I wanted to make sure that none of our heroines was in any way derivative of a male counterpart – the women come first in this world.

In the DC (and Marvel) universes, she says, "it tends to be a team of five dudes and one woman, and she then has to be everything, and no woman can ever be everything. With a large cast, a large number of women, they don’t have to be icons and idols, they can just be themselves," she explained. "It’s so refreshing to create the women as characters, and not as liabilities or ticking time bombs."

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