Japanese American Internment During World War II: A History and Reference Guide
Wendy Ng, 2002.
She starts off discussing terminology, favoring the term "concentration camp" over "relocation centers." Next is a chronology of events in Japanese American history.
Chapter 1 is about Japanese immigration, the Issei, Nisei and Sansei, the anti-Japanese movement and Japanese in Hawaii. Chapter 2 covers the evacuation part of the history and has a good table showing how specific people were involved in the decision to relocate the Issei and Nisei.
Chapter 3 is entitled "Life Within Barbed Wire" and is about life in the camps. There are a lot of good tables of information in this chapter. Information on the Justice Department centers and Army centers is also included as well as information on Japanese-Peruvians.
Chapter 4 is about the Japanese Americans who became involved in the U.S. military and those who were draft resisters. This includes the 100th and 442nd and what they did, the Tule Lake segregation center, and other forms of military service performed by the Nisei.
Chapter 5 is about the legal challenges to the evacuation and internment, and it covers the major cases. Resettlement and redress is covered in chapter 6 of the book. A photographic essay follows, and after that biographies about "The personalities behind the Japanese American internment program". Reproductions of some of the orders and the loyalty questionnaire are included.
This is sort of a "Cliff Notes" type of book on the Japanese Americans. The information is very condensed and it's useful as an introduction, but I don't think it really lives up to its "reference guide" title. An good reference guide would be probably three to five times as thick. The bibliographies section is not really necessary nor is the photographic essay since it also is quite short. It's like those two parts were padding.
It's not a bad book, but it's not quite what it calls itself, either.
Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
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