Library Catalog
On the Shelf at CCBC Libraries
Citizen Internees by
Through a new collection of primary documents about Japanese internment during World War II, this book enables a broader understanding of the injustice experienced by displaced people within the United States in the 20th century. In the 1940s, Japanese and Japanese American internees of Redwood City, CA, had a dedicated ally: J. Elmer Morrish, a banker who kept their businesses alive, made sure their taxes were paid, and safeguarded their properties until after the end of World War II and the internees were finally released. What were Morrish's motivations for his tireless efforts to help the internees? How did the unjustly incarcerated deal with the loss of freedom in the camps, and how did they envision their future? And how did the internees both cooperate with the U.S. government and attempt to resist victimization? Citizen Internees: A Second Look at Race and Citizenship in Japanese American Internment Camps is an edited selection from a collection of more than 2,000 pieces of correspondence--some of which is previously unpublished--regarding the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans from Redwood City, CA. These primary source documents reveal the experiences and emotions of a group of imprisoned people attempting to run the necessary day-to-day tasks of the lives they were forced to leave behind--as property owners, taxpayers, and proprietors. Through these letters about practical matters, readers can gain insight into the internees' changing family relations, their financial concerns, and their struggles in making decisions about an uncertain future. The book also includes essays that supply background information, analysis of the documents' contents and meaning, and historical context. Enables readers to see--through primary documents comprising letters written by the internees and banker J. Elmer Moorish in Redwood City, CA--how Japanese-American citizens who were interned during World War II handled their financial affairs Analyzes the interactions between Japanese Americans and Anglo-Americans during a period of widespread xenophobia and racial tension in the United States Helps readers to better understand the important issues of citizenship and race in America during and just after World War II Reveals new information on the day-to-day lives of Japanese Americans while residing in internment camps located in various areas of the United States
Call Number: D769.8.A6 I89 2017
Midnight in Broad Daylight by
Meticulously researched and beautifully written, the true story of a Japanese American family that found itself on opposite sides during World War II--an epic tale of family, separation, divided loyalties, love, reconciliation, loss, and redemption--this is a riveting chronicle of U.S.-Japan relations and the Japanese experience in America. After their father's death, Harry, Frank, and Pierce Fukuhara--all born and raised in the Pacific Northwest--moved to Hiroshima, their mother's ancestral home. Eager to go back to America, Harry returned in the late 1930s. Then came Pearl Harbor. Harry was sent to an internment camp until a call came for Japanese translators and he dutifully volunteered to serve his country. Back in Hiroshima, his brothers Frank and Pierce became soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army. As the war raged on, Harry, one of the finest bilingual interpreters in the United States Army, island-hopped across the Pacific, moving ever closer to the enemy--and to his younger brothers. But before the Fukuharas would have to face each other in battle, the U.S. detonated the atomic bomb over Hiroshima, gravely injuring tens of thousands of civilians, including members of their family. Alternating between the American and Japanese perspectives, Midnight in Broad Daylight captures the uncertainty and intensity of those charged with the fighting as well as the deteriorating home front of Hiroshima--as never told before in English--and provides a fresh look at the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Intimate and evocative, it is an indelible portrait of a resilient family, a scathing examination of racism and xenophobia, an homage to the tremendous Japanese American contribution to the American war effort, and an invaluable addition to the historical record of this extraordinary time.
Call Number: D753.8 .S24 2016
Infamy by
ALOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER* ANEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEWEDITOR''S CHOICE*Bestselling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II Less than three months after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and inflamed the nation, President Roosevelt signed an executive order declaring parts of four western states to be a war zone operating under military rule. The U.S. Army immediately began rounding up thousands of Japanese-Americans, sometimes giving them less than 24 hours to vacate their houses and farms. For the rest of the war, these victims of war hysteria were imprisoned in primitive camps. InInfamy, the story of this appalling chapter in American history is told more powerfully than ever before. Acclaimed historian Richard Reeves has interviewed survivors, read numerous private letters and memoirs, and combed through archives to deliver a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes-FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow-were in this case villains, but we also learn of many Americans who took great risks to defend the rights of the internees. Most especially, we hear the poignant stories of those who spent years in "war relocation camps," many of whom suffered this terrible injustice with remarkable grace. Racism, greed, xenophobia, and a thirst for revenge: a dark strand in the American character underlies this story of one of the most shameful episodes in our history. But by recovering the past,Infamy has given voice to those who ultimately helped the nation better understand the true meaning of patriotism. Praise forInfamy "A compulsively readable, emotionally rich and passionately written account of the internment of 120,000 American Japanese in concentration camps during World War II.... Reeves'' excellentInfamy, the first popular, general history of the subject in more than 25 years, reminds us that not only can it happen here, it did.... Every reader who has lived the post-9/11 era will immediately notice the parallels."--Los Angeles Times "Highly readable.... The story of this national disgrace, long buried...still has the power to shock. [Infamy is a] vivid and instructive reminder of what war and fear can do to civilized people." --Evan Thomas,The New York Times Book Review "History''s judgment is that internment...was wrong. Mr. Reeves''s excellent book gives us an opportunity to learn from past mistakes.... Reeves is especially good at bringing to life the social experience of internment." --The Wall Street Journal "Richard Reeves''s book on the harsh, prolonged and unjustified internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is a detailed account of a painful and shameful period in modern American history.Infamy combines Reeves''s journalist''s training with his historian''s eye to give us a page-turner on how hysteria at the highest levels can shatter our most fundamental rights. Brace yourself and read this very important book." --Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation "For years, the unjust relocation and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II - the majority of them American citizens - was shrouded in shame and secrecy.... [Infamy''s] greatest strength is probably Reeves''s masterful use of anecdotes, which enliven an epic story with poignant tales of individual hardship, courage, and endurance." --The Boston Globe "Infamy tells the story of why and how the American government--with the full support of its citizenry--illegally interned Japanese-Americans. Richard Reeves even-handedly examines this dangerous precedent-setting time when the Constitution was trampled by misinformation, prejudice, and fear. Today as Muslim and Hispanic immigrants are being blamed for America''s ills,Infamy is a timely and important read." --James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage "InInfamy, journalist Richard Reeves...provides a sweeping and searching account of this appalling chapter in the history of the United States.... Reeves reserves the heart of his book -- and rightfully so -- for a narrative of the heartbreaking experiences of evacuated individuals and families." --San Francisco Chronicle "Infamy...is perhaps the most thorough history of the relocation to date." --The Denver Post "More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were locked up during World War II...[andInfamy] tells their tale with energy, compassion and moral outrage.... With meticulous care [Reeves documents] the decisions made in Washington by the world''s most powerful men, and how those decisions affected the lives of ordinary Americans whose only crime was to be of Japanese descent." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
Call Number: D769.8.A6 R43 2015
Japanese-American Internment During World War II by
Provides a detailed account of the evacuation and internment of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans; describes living conditions in the camps; discusses the economic, emotional, and physical toll on interned Japanese-Americans; and ponders the legacy of internment on American society. Includes biographies, primary sources, and more.
Call Number: D769.8.A6 B43 2014
EBooks Found on the Internet
- Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese-Americans
Text and photographs by Ansel Adams
Online Articles
- The Injustice of Japanese-American Internment Camps Resonates Strongly to This Day
Smithsonian, January/February 2017
Latest News
Life in a Japanese Internment Camp
The Japanese American Internment Museum
- Why We Must Remember Rohwer
By George Takei
The Huffington Post, 4/22/2013
Databases
- ProQuest Central This link opens in a new window
Articles on any subject. This is a good place to start.
- ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Baltimore Sun This link opens in a new window
Primary source articles covering the politics, society and events of the time period 1837 - 1992.
- History Research This link opens in a new window
Primary documents as well as essays about historical topics and people.
- World History This link opens in a new window
Articles, essays, and primary sources on the history of the world.
Educator Resources
- Japanese-American Internment During World War II
from National Archives
Online From CCBC Libraries
Bataan Survivor by
A forgotten account, written in the immediate aftermath of World War II, which vividly portrays the valor, sacrifice, suffering, and liberation of the defenders of Bataan and Corregidor through the eyes of one survivor. The personal memoir of Colonel David L. Hardee, first drafted at sea from April-May 1945 following his liberation from Japanese captivity, is a thorough treatment of his time in the Philippines. A career infantry officer, Hardee fought during the Battle of Bataan as executive officer of the Provisional Air Corps Regiment. Captured in April 1942 after the American surrender on Bataan, Hardee survived the Bataan Death March and proceeded to endure a series of squalid prison camps. A debilitating hernia left Hardee too ill to travel to Japan in 1944, making him one of the few lieutenant colonels to remain in the Philippines and subsequently survive the war. As a primary account written almost immediately after his liberation, Hardee's memoir is fresh, vivid, and devoid of decades of faded memories or contemporary influences associated with memoirs written years after an experience. This once-forgotten memoir has been carefully edited, illustrated and annotated to unlock the true depths of Hardee's experience as a soldier, prisoner, and liberated survivor of the Pacific War.
ISBN: 9780826220820Publication Date: 2017
Desert Exile by
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, everything changed for Yoshiko Uchida. Desert Exile is her autobiographical account of life before and during World War II. The book does more than relate the day-to-day experience of living in stalls at the Tanforan Racetrack, the assembly center just south of San Francisco, and in the Topaz, Utah, internment camp. It tells the story of the courage and strength displayed by those who were interned. Replaces ISBN 9780295961903
Publication Date: 2015
Gasa-Gasa Girl Goes to Camp by
Lily Nakai and her family lived in southern California, where sometimes she and a friend dreamt of climbing the Hollywood sign that lit the night. At age ten, after believing that her family was simply going on a "camping trip," she found herself living in a tar-papered barrack, nightly gazing out instead at a searchlight. She wondered if anything would ever be normal again. In this creative memoir, Lily Havey combines storytelling, watercolor, and personal photographs to recount her youth in two Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. In short vignettes snapshots of people, recreated scenes and events a ten-year-old girl develops into a teenager while confined. Vintage photographs reveal the historical, cultural, and familial contexts of that growth and of the Nakais' dislocation. The paintings and her animated writing together pull us into a turbulent era when America disgracefully incarcerated, without due process, thousands of American citizens because of their race. These stories of love, loss, and discovery recall a girl balancing precariously between childhood and adolescence. In turn wrenching, funny, touching, and biting but consistently engrossing, they elucidate the daily challenges of life in the camp and the internees' many adaptations. Winner of the Evans Biography Award. Selected by the American Library Association as one the Best of the Best from University Presses. Finalist in the cover design category in the Southwest Book Design and Production Awards.
Publication Date: 2014
Experiences of Japanese American Women During and after World War II by
Experiences of Japanese American Women during and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards examines the experiences of Japanese American women who were in internment camps during World War II and after. Precious Yamaguchi follows these women after they were released and shows how they tried to rebuild their lives after losing everything. Using evidence from primary sources as well as over seven years of interviews with sixteen women, Yamaguchi provides a feminist, intergenerational, and historical study of how unequal the justice system has been to this group of people and how it has affected their quality of life, sense of identity, and relationship with future generations.
Publication Date: 2014
Websites
- Densho
Densho's mission is to preserve the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II - The War Relocation Centers of World War II: When Fear was Stronger than Justice
An online lesson from the National Park Service - JARDA: Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives
A site created by the University of California. - Children of the Camps: Internment History
From PBS. Includes historical documents, timeline information on camps and health impact - "Suffering Under a Great Injustice" : Ansel Adams’s Photographs of Japanese-American Internment at ManzanarA rare set of photographs by Ansel Adams (1902-1984) documenting Japanese Americans interned at the Manzanar War Relocation Center. These photographs are made available by the Library of Congress.
- Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Center
The Rohwer Japanese American Relocation Center in Arkansas is largely lost to history. Between 1942 and 1945, up to 8,000 Japanese Americans were interned at Rohwer—a 500-acre camp surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards. Although most physical remains have been wiped from the landscape, important stories remain to be shared.