Our Cultural Heritage: Japanese Americans

This is a book written for elementary-school level children. As with most books I've seen written for young people, it does a good job condensing information into a format that is easily read and interesting. There are also good photos.

The first chapter deals with Japanese history and immigration. The author says that many young Japanese who did not want to fight in the Sino-Soviet war decided to immigrate to Hawaii and the U.S. to avoid fighting in the war.

The second chapter is about the difficult reception the immigrations ran into when they go to the U.S. She writes that the “Little Tokyos” were established largely because the immigrants were rejected by American society and had to turn to their own kind for business and a social life.

The same chapter discusses (very briefly) the internment of the Japanese Americans.

Chapter Three is entitled “Starting Over” and is about their life after internment. The issue of redress is also dealt with in the chapter.

The fourth chapter is about famous persons of Japanese ancestry in the U.S., like Kristi Yamaguchi, gold medal skater and (not in the book since it happened after the book was written) winner of Dancing with the Stars. (She had some incredible performances during that season; absolutely fantastic dancing and very, very cute.)

The book also includes a time line, a glossary, and a listing of other resources.

As I said, books like these done for young people are almost always done very well.

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Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page