"How could such a tragedy have occurred
in a democratic society
that prides itself on individual rights and freedoms?"
- Milton S. Eisenhower -
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811.54 DEC, May Sky: there
is always tomorrow: an anthology of Japanese American concentration camp
kaiko haiku
In one of the most shameful moments of U.S.
history, thousands of innocent citizens of Japanese descent were
interned in concentration camps in the western states. Among them were
many amateur poets who were active in haiku societies and who did not
stop writing during their confinement. Editor de Cristoforo, herself a
former internee, has collected the poignant documents of human pain and
hope that are those concentration camp haiku, and in her lengthy
preface, she sets them in their artistic and social contexts. Although
the preface is interesting and academically important, the poems
themselves--simple in language, emotionally blunt--are the heart of this
book. "Hand-cuffed and taken away / I see my husband / even today," one
woman writes. "Women are busier than men / people are living in disarray
/ and there are irises," another records. And there is this: "Frosty
night / listening to rumbling train / we have come a long way." A
beautiful, important collection and an astonishing document of the human
spirit.
921 HOU,
Farewell to Manzanar
During World War II a community
called Manzanar was hastily created in the high mountain desert country
of California, east of the Sierras. Its purpose was to house thousands
of Japanese American internees. One of the first families to arrive was
the Wakatsukis, who were ordered to leave their fishing business in Long
Beach and take with them only the belongings they could carry. For
Jeanne Wakatsuki, a seven-year-old child, Manzanar became a way of life
in which she struggled and adapted, observed and grew. For her father it
was essentially the end of his life. At age thirty-seven, Jeanne
Wakatsuki Houston recalls life at Manzanar through the eyes of the child
she was. She tells of her fear, confusion, and bewilderment as well as
the dignity and great resourcefulness of people in oppressive and
demeaning circumstances. Written with her husband, Jeanne delivers a
powerful first-person account that reveals her search for the meaning of
Manzanar.
921 SON, Nisei Daughter
Monica Sone spent her
childhood in pre-World War II Seattle, in a part Japanese, part American
world. Dinner might be steak and pumpkin pie or pickled daikon, rice,
and soy sauce; there was American public school during the day and the
strict formality of Japanese school in the late afternoons. "I found
myself switching my personality back and forth daily like a chameleon.
At Bailey Gatzert School I was a jumping, screaming, roustabout Yankee,
but at the stroke of three...I suddenly became a modest, faltering,
earnest little Japanese girl with a small timid voice." Her memories of
growing up are vivid and full of marvelous stories, showing the
confusion, frustration, and enrichment of living within two cultures.
These elements come together when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and Monica
and her family are sent to an internment camp in Topaz, Idaho. Nisei
Daughter describes the loss of property and the personal insults, the
barbed wire and armed guards, the dust storms, horrible food, unfinished
barracks, and barren land - and the efforts of the Japanese-Americans to
maintain their ethics, family life, and belief in the United States.
Monica Sone is furious at the blatant disregard of her civil rights, and
yet ironically, it is during her time in the camps and afterwards in the
Midwest that she finally brings together the various aspects of her
heritage. Straightforward, searching, often funny, this is a highly
readable account of one woman's experience living in many worlds.
921 TAK, To the Stars:
the autobiography of George Takei
Star Trek's Mr. Sulu may be
famous for fictional adventures out among the asteroids, but his own
life, especially the early years, down on terra firma has been
adventurous, too. To begin with, adventure stemmed from the accident of
birth. The first child of a Japanese American mother and Japanese
immigrant father denied U.S. citizenship because of the naturalization
quotas then in force, Takei went with them into internment camps, first
in Arkansas and then in California, during World War II. After the war,
the family settled in East L.A., where George began school and a
lifelong appreciation for Latino culture. Later, his father managed a
crosstown move that put George into a mixed-race, up-and-coming,
middle-class neighborhood, and his first adventure in political action
occurred when teenage George found summer work picking strawberries and
discovered the paymasters cheating Mexican pickers. His reflections on
politics and social issues round out and enhance his Star Trek memoir,
making for an exceptional contribution.
921 UCH, The Invisible
Thread
Growing up in California,
Yoshi knew her family looked different from their neighbors. Still, she
felt like an American. But everything changed when America went to war
against Japan. Along with all the other Japanese-Americans on the West
Coast, Yoshi's family were rounded up and imprisoned in a crowded. badly
built camp in the Nevada desert because they "looked like the enemy."
Yoshiko Uchida grew up to be an award-winning author. This memoir of her
childhood gives a personal account of a shameful episode in American
history.
929.2 KES, Stubborn Twig:
three generations in the life of a Japanese American family
The Japanese immigrant
experience is documented here in a detailed social history of three
generations of an Oregon family. Beginning with the life of 16-year-old
Masuo Yasui, who arrived in 1903 from an agricultural village in the
Honshu region of Japan to work as a railroad laborer in Oregon's Hood
River Valley, the book reaches to the lives of his
grandchildren--lawyers, doctors, teachers and filmmakers--some of whom
have married non-Asians. Kessler, a journalism teacher at the University
of Oregon and author of six books, takes us through the obstacle course
which Asian immigrants typically had to overcome, from the early
exclusionary laws barring them from citizenship, to WW II internment
camps. Her research into each of her subject's lives is diligent and she
recounts the intimate tragedies (suicides, illnesses), the
determination, hard work and family solidarity that characterized the
Yasuis' rise to affluence and success. Kessler has created a
praiseworthy chronicle of the "process and meaning of becoming an
American, of promise and prejudice in a new land." As she writes in her
preface, "Being an outsider is the quintessential American experience.
It is, in fact, our single common bond.".
940.53 LEV, A Fence Away
from Freedom
Loss of property, liberty,
and in a few cases, life for Americans of Japanese descent, was the
result of Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin Roosevelt
in February of 1944. More than 110,000 people were removed from their
homes along the West Coast and moved to makeshift facilities in the
interior euphemistically labeled "relocation camps." Levine has gathered
together the personal testimony of 35 survivors, all of whom were
children or teenagers at the time. These moving stories clearly
demonstrate the depth of racial hatred present in the U.S. even before
Pearl Harbor. That little or no protest was raised by the majority of
Americans at the time doesn't seem surprising. What is astonishing,
however, is how loyal most of the Japanese Americans remained to the
U.S. government. The testimony gathered here tells of many young men who
volunteered for the all-Nisei 442nd Regimental Combat Team and fought
with distinction in Europe. But readers are also told of those who
resisted the government and the price that they paid for it. Conditions
in the camps are described in great detail, including the many
adaptations that people came up with to cope with internment and try to
carry on a normal life.
940.53 MUL, Free to Die
for their Country
In the many books written
about the Japanese American internment during World War II, one aspect
that has not been treated in much detail is what happened when the U.S.
military decided to draft the same young men the government had locked
away in internment camps. Muller (Univ. of North Carolina School of Law)
takes a detailed look at the resisters at the Minidoka, Heart Mountain,
and Tule Lake camps. Using interviews with 11 of the resisters, as well
as government records, court cases, internment camp newspapers, and
more, Muller investigates why the government reinstated the draft for
Japanese Americans in 1943, considers why some of the Nisei resisted,
and examines the trials, prison sentences, and lasting aftereffects on
their lives. He also looks at the legal reasoning, or lack thereof,
behind the verdicts; the Minidoka and Heart Mountain resisters were
convicted, while the Tule Lake resisters were acquitted. Although all
were pardoned in 1947, they still face criticism from family and from
veterans, and most have remained silent until now.
940.53 NG, Japanese
American Internment during World War II
The internment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War
II is one of the most shameful episodes in American history. This
history and reference guide will help students and other interested
readers to understand the history of this action and its
reinterpretation in recent years, but it will also help readers to
understand the Japanese American wartime experience through the words of
those who were interned. Why did the U.S. government take this
extraordinary action? How was the evacuation and resettlement handled?
How did Japanese Americans feel on being asked to leave their homes and
live in what amounted to concentration camps? How did they respond, and
did they resist? What developments have taken place in the last twenty
years that have reevaluated this wartime action? A variety of materials
is provided to assist readers in understanding the internment
experience. Six interpretive essays examine key aspects of the event and
provide new interpretations based on the most recent scholarship. Essays
include: - A short narrative history of the Japanese in America before
World War II - The evacuation - Life within barbed wire-the assembly and
relocation centers - The question of loyalty-Japanese Americans in the
military and draft resisters - Legal challenges to the evacuation and
internment - After the war-resettlement and redress A chronology of
events, 26 biographical profiles of important figures, the text of 10
key primary documents--from Executive Order 9066, which authorized the
internment camps, to first-person accounts of the internment
experience--a glossary of terms, and an annotative bibliography of
recommended print sources and web sites provide ready reference value.
940.53 OKI, Whispered
Silences
In 1981, photographer Myers
stumbled onto the dusty remains of the Japanese relocation camp of
Manzanar in California. She set out to record the half-buried past of
this and nine other camps, taking pictures of ruined barracks,
tombstones, deserted gardens, moldering toys. Whispered Silences
combines 65 of those stark duotone photographs of parched landscapes and
forgotten objects with a smart, concise introduction to the Japanese
American experience by Cornell historian Okihiro. Having survived
horrifying conditions as plantation workers, indentured servants and
picture brides, the first Japanese immigrants could only hope for better
for their children, who, unlike them, could become citizens. But
second-generation Japanese American citizens faced another hurdle in the
paranoid racism that spawned a Bureau of Investigation report published
in 1920 claiming that Japan was "bent on a 'program for world
supremacy'" and, some 20 years later, the interning of 110,000 people of
Japanese ancestry. Okihiro uses poetry and memoirs of internees who
recall trying to create victory gardens from the sandy soil or paper
flowers from orange wrappings, a resourcefulness that parallels the
"Spam sushi" of their parents' plantation experiences. Okihiro's
interwoven personal reminiscence is entirely apt, and his father's story
in particular is a metaphor. The elder Okihiro left Hawaii to train in a
segregated battalion "knowing that his parents were in a little village
just outside Hiroshima, that his brother was probably in Japan's
military, that his own country distrusted him." He would eventually earn
a Purple Heart.
940.53 PER, Personal
Justice Denied: Report of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and
Internment of Civilians
This book tells the
extraordinary story of the incarnation of mainland Japanese Americans
and Alaskan Aleuts during World War II. Although this wartime episode is
now almost universally recognized as a catastrophe, for decades various
government officials and agencies defended their actions by asserting a
military necessity. Learn about the situation before Pearl Harbor,
Executive Order 9066, Economic Loss, Relocation Centers, Germans and
German Americans, and After Camp.
940.53 ROB, By the Order
of the President: FDR and the internment of Japanese Americans
On February 19, 1942,
following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and Japanese Army
successes in the Pacific, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a
fateful order. In the name of security, Executive Order 9066 allowed for
the summary removal of Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese
descent from their West Coast homes and their incarceration under guard
in camps. Amid the numerous histories and memoirs devoted to this
shameful event, FDR's contributions have been seen as negligible. Now,
using Roosevelt's own writings, his advisors' letters and diaries, and
internal government documents, Greg Robinson reveals the president's
central role in making and implementing the internment and examines not
only what the president did but why. Robinson traces FDR's outlook back
to his formative years, and to the early twentieth century's racialist
view of ethnic Japanese in America as immutably "foreign" and
threatening. These prejudicial sentiments, along with his constitutional
philosophy and leadership style, contributed to Roosevelt's approval of
the unprecedented mistreatment of American citizens. His hands-on
participation and interventions were critical in determining the nature,
duration, and consequences of the administration's internment policy. By
Order of the President attempts to explain how a great humanitarian
leader and his advisors, who were fighting a war to preserve democracy,
could have implemented such a profoundly unjust and undemocratic policy
toward their own people. It reminds us of the power of a president's
beliefs to influence and determine public policy and of the need for
citizen vigilance to protect the rights of all against potential abuses.
940.53 STA, I Am An
American: a true story of Japanese internment
In clear and fascinating prose, Stanley has set forth the compelling
story of one of America's darkest times- the internment of Japanese
Americans during World War II. He has based his account on the
experiences of Shi Nomura, who was sent to Manzanar in the deserts of
eastern California when he was a high school senior. But the author
weaves in more than absorbing personal details; he places the camps in a
broader historical context, from Japanese immigration and the resentment
it aroused to outstanding Japanese American service in the war. His
meticulously researched volume is accompanied by numerous, fine period
black-and-white photographs, many by Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams; and
he makes judicious use of maps. This eloquent account of the disastrous
results of racial prejudice stands as a reminder to us in today's
pluralistic society.
940.53 TAK, A Child in
Prison Camp
When Shizuye Takashima,
“Shichan” as she was called, was eleven years old, her entire world
changed forever. As a Japanese-Canadian in 1941, she was among thousands
of people forced from their homes and sent to live in internment camps
in the Canadian Rockies. Although none had been convicted of any crime,
they were considered the enemy because the country was at war with
Japan. In this true story of sadness and joy, Shichan recalls her life
in the days leading up to her family’s forced movement to the camp, her
fear, anger, and frustration as the war drags on, and the surprising
joys in the camp: a Kabuki play, holiday celebrations, and the
ever-present beauty of the stars.
940.53 TAK,
Double victory : a multicultural
history of America in World War II
America's entry into World
War II made comrades-in-arms of men and women from every region and
every walk of life, united in the battle for freedom and against
fascism. It is no small irony, historian Ronald Takaki observes, that
the armed struggle for democracy abroad "was accompanied by a disregard
for our nation's declaration that 'all men are created equal'" in the
form of institutional racism of many kinds, from the segregation of
African American units to the imprisonment of Japanese Americans and the
refusal to grant asylum to Jewish refugees. In Double Victory, Takaki
examines the many contributions of America's minorities to the war
effort, celebrating the work of Mexican farm laborers and Anglo women
welders, of Navajo code talkers and Filipino foot soldiers, who
proclaimed themselves to be "men, not houseboys," of Chinese American
combat nurses and Asian Indian gunners. These men and women, Takaki
writes, made extraordinary sacrifices in their battle against enemies
without and enemies within. Although their efforts were not always
appreciated at the time, they helped set in motion the struggle for
civil rights that would explode two decades later. Takaki's book is a
welcome and much needed entry in the recent literature on the World War
II era, and it merits the widest possible audience.
940.53 TAY,
Jewel of the desert : Japanese
American internment at Topaz
In the spring of 1942, under the guise of
"military necessity," the U.S. government evacuated 110,000 Japanese
Americans from their homes on the West Coast. About 7,000 people from
the San Francisco Bay Area--the vast majority of whom were American
citizens--were moved to an assembly center at Tanforan Racetrack and
then to a concentration camp in Topaz, Utah. Dubbed the "jewel of the
desert," the camp remained in operation until October 1945. This
compelling book tells the history of Japanese Americans of San Francisco
and the Bay Area, and of their experiences of relocation and internment.
940.53 TUN,
The children of Topaz : the story of a
Japanese American internment camp : based on a classroom diary
The authors have constructed
their text around an actual classroom diary kept by American children of
Japanese ancestry, unfairly and unconstitutionally sent to prison camp
during World War II. Selections of entries made by a third-grade class
cover the period from March 8 to August 12, 1943. Under each date, the
brief accounts are given, followed by extensive, well-researched
commentaries explaining the children's writing. The youngsters reveal a
lively interest in the world around them and a patriotic support of the
war effort. The commentary details the bleakness and cruelty of their
situations and amazing loyalty in light of the injustices heaped upon
their families by the U.S. government and their fellow citizens. The
well-chosen illustrations consist of fine-quality period photographs, a
layout of the camp, and black-and-white reproductions of the children's
crayon artwork. The photos are often quite moving and bring home the
experiences described in the text. Here readers are exposed to
nine-year-olds writing as it happened and are given a timely reminder
for those who say, "It can't happen here.".
940.54 ADA, Born free and
equal : the story of loyal Japanese Americans, Manzanar Relocation
Center, Inyo County, California : photographs from the Library of
Congress collection
On February 19, 1942, U.S.
presidential order forcibly removed more than 110,000 persons from their
homes to one of ten "war relocation centers" across the country. All
were of Japanese ancestry, but two-thirds were American citizens. Ralph
Merritt, then director of Manzanar War Relocation Center, asked friend
Ansel Adams to photograph the center, set against the remote mountains
of California's Sierra Nevada. The resulting effort, Born Free and
Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans, written and photographed
by Adams, was released in 1944 to the American public as a book and
exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Reeling from the impact
of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and unable to make the distinction
between American citizens of Japanese ancestry and the Japanese enemy of
war, Adams' message was essentially lost on the American public. In
1965, Adams donated his entire collection of Manzanar photographs to the
Library of Congress. Archie Miyatake, interned at Manzanar with his
family and father, Los Angeles photographer Toyo Miyatake, wrote the
introduction to this new edition. His father smuggled into camp a
contraband camera lens and ground glass, making a camera from scraps of
wood. Toyo said to his son: "As a photographer I have a responsibility
to record life here at this camp so this kind of thing never happens
again.".
940.54 BAI, City in the
Sun
This engrossing study is
focused upon the largest of these immense prisons—Poston, the City in
the Sun—hastily erected upon the heat ridden and pestilential Colorado
River Desert in western Arizona—isolated shack-city of 20,000 unhappy
and bewildered souls. Here is the story of American citizens, treated as
enemy aliens, and the frustrating problems when they were forced to
adjust to an inhuman and unbelievable experience. The reaction of
Poston’s angered and anxious populace, the revolt, and its magnificent
resolution, all are sensitively and excitingly chronicled.
940.54 CON, Executive Order
9066: the internment of 110,000 Japanese Americans
The days following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were dark days of
the American spirit. Unable to strike back effectively against the
Japanese Empire, Americans in the Western states lashed out at fellow
citizens and resident aliens o Japanese ancestry. Executive
Order 9066,
signed by President Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, was the instrument
that allowed military commanders to designate areas "from which any or
all persons may be excluded." Under this order
all Japanese and Americans of Japanese ancestry were removed from
Western coastal regions to guarded camps in the interior.
940.54 COO,
Remembering Manzanar : life in a
Japanese relocation camp
Examine life in the Manzanar relocation camp
in eastern California, where more than 10,000 Japanese Americans were
exiled between March 1942 and November 1945. Like many, the author feels
the WWII confinement of American citizens, an act he deems "one of the
most serious mistakes in our nation's history." Get a clear portrait of
residents' living conditions and daily routines. The inclusion of quotes
from those who lived at Manzanar gives the book a sense of immediacy as
well as a sharp emotional edge. Reinforcing the bitter irony of this
experience are such pointed comments as that of a then 12-year-old boy,
who asks, "What's the use of studying American history when we're behind
barbed wire?" Carefully selected photos (including some by Dorothea
Lange and Ansel Adams) balance government-sanctioned and unofficial
pictures of life in the camp.
940.54 INO, The Heart
Mountain Story
Life in the internment camp, was not quite what was portrayed in the
official War Relocation Authority photographs. The photographs of the
Heart Mountain Relocation Center remained largely hidden until an
exhibition in 1995.
940.54 KIK, Promises kept
: the life of an Issei man
This is the story of the
author's father, Saburo, through the eyes of his wife and child. They
recall different parts of his past and the inner turmoil that disturbed
him much of his life. Though his gambling habit, World War II, and
incarceration in a concentration camp threatened to split the family
apart, Saburo vows that his teachings and beliefs would help the family
survive. They were promises kept.
940.54 KNA,
Our house divided : seven Japanese American
families in World War II
Knaefler utilized interviews
published in 1966 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Pearl Harbor to
document the stories in Our House Divided . Fifty years ago, Japanese
Americans were herded together, virtually imprisoned, and forced by the
federal government to forfeit all vestiges of citizenship. Knaefler's
family histories reflect the experiences of seven American families of
Japanese descent who suffered from anti-Japanese sentiment in the United
States. One of her selections, for example, follows the five Yempuku
brothers, four of whom left Hawaii for Japan in 1933. Only the eldest,
Ralph, remained, and he later served in the American Army during the
war. Younger brother Donald relates how, during the surrender
proceedings, he saw Ralph, yet could not speak with him. Donald did,
however, inform the rest of the family that Ralph was still alive, as
they had no word during the war.
940.54 MAC, A Matter of
Conscience : Essays on the World War II Heart Mountain Draft Resistance
Movement
This book contains a collection of essays by this country's leading
scholars in the field of Japanese American history. Look at the World
War II draft resistance movement at the Heart Mountain Internment Camp
in Wyoming. Explore what it was like for the young men detained there.
940.54 NEI,
Strawberry days : how internment
destroyed a Japanese American community
The poignant story of a Japanese
American community torn apart by racism and WWII internment Strawberry
Days tells the vivid and moving tale of the creation and destruction of
a Japanese immigrant community. Before World War II, Bellevue, the
now-booming 'edge city' on the outskirts of Seattle, was a prosperous
farm town renowned for its strawberries. Many of its farmers were recent
Japanese immigrants who, despite being rejected by white society, were
able to make a living cultivating the rich soil. Yet the lives they
created for themselves through years of hard work vanished almost
instantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. David Neiwert combines
compelling storytelling with firsthand interviews and newly uncovered
documents to weave together the history of this community and the racist
schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after
the war. Ultimately, Strawberry Days represents more than one
community's story, reminding us that bigotry's roots are deeply
ingrained in the very fiber of American society.
940.54 ODO, No sword to
bury : Japanese Americans in Hawaii during World War II
When bombs rained down on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese American
college students were among the many young men enrolled in ROTC and
immediately called upon to defend the Hawaiian islands against invasion.
In a few weeks, however, the military government questioned their
loyalty and disarmed them. In No Sword to Bury, Franklin Odo places the
largely untold story of the wartime experience of these young men in the
context of the community created by their immigrant families and its
relationship to the larger, white-dominated society. At the heart of the
book are vivid oral histories that recall their service on the home
front in the Varsity Victory Volunteers, a non-military group dedicated
to public works, as well as in the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat
Team. Illuminating a critical moment in ethnic identity formation among
this first generation of Americans of Japanese descent (the nisei), Odo
shows how the war-time service and the post-war success of these men
contributed to the simplistic view of Japanese Americans as a model
minority in Hawai`i.
940.54 UCH, Desert exile:
the uprooting of a Japanese American family
Yoshiko Uchida writes beautifully about her family, of life before
the war, and of their internment during the war. The story illuminates
the Issei and Nisei internment experience. It also pays tribute to her
parents, their values, and to their generation.
FIC DEN, The Journal of
Ben Uchida: citizen 13559
Twelve-year-old Ben Uchida keeps a journal of his experiences as a
prisoner in a Japanese internment camp in Mirror Lake, California,
during World War II.
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