Looking Like the Enemy: My Story of Imprisonment in Japanese-American Internment Camps
This is a thoroughly excellent book on the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. It's a first-person account of a girl who was 17 at the time. It covers her life and family before the internment, during and after the internment, and goes into a lot of very interesting detail about her life and the life of her family. They were at several camps and one assembly area during the time period.
One of the more moving parts is about what happened on December 7th, 1941, how the family found out about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and how they reacted to that attack. In their particular neighborhood, an island in Puget Sound, they were lucky in that they did not run into the immediate vicious anti-Japanese prejudice. Mary, the author, actually had a much better time at school then did many other Japanese-American children in other schools after the attack.
The neighborhood was fairly small, and the people rather close, so this probably accounts for the lessened hatred of persons of Japanese ancestry after the attack. These were people, PJAs and whites, who had known each other for years and had gotten along very well.
She writes about radio broadcasts that claimed “Japanese sympathizers in Hawaii cut arrows into the cane fields, directing Japanese planes to Pearl Harbor. There were reports of Japanese-American sabotage on the West Coast and of an impending attack on our continent.”
She then spends time talking about the Issei and Nisei culture, and its relation to American culture. She then goes into what her family did after Executive Order 9066 was announced, and how they, like many other families, destroyed mementos from Japan, destroying their own family's history in order to avoid possible trouble with American authorities.
The first place they went to was the Pinedale Assembly Area, and she describes the rather primitive living conditions they all had to adapt to, with only one light bulb in a 20'x 20' area, with no running water, no indoor plumbing, and no way to fix food.
Later, her family was moved to Tule Lake, and she again describes the conditions and the kinds of things that happened, especially in relation to the loyalty questionnaire and how there was some violence at that camp (and others) over questions 27 and 28. They were then relocated to the Heart Mountain camp, and her brother went into the Army and she went into nurse's training.
She even talks about her family's release from the camp after the war. They were very lucky in that they returned to their original home in Puget Sound and it was still there. They were able to re-start their lives and their farm, not encountering the considerable hatred that many others encountered when they tried to go back to their original homes.
This is a very good book about the camps, very personal and very comprehensive. One of the best ones I have read.
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