The Spoilage: Japanese American Evacuation and Resettlement
Dorothy Swaine Thomas, 1946
The author is a social scientist who was involved in studying the camps, aimed at examining the social behavior and adjustments of the people who were interned. The program involved the Tule Lake, Poston and Minidoka camps.
The author starts off recounting briefly the history of Japanese in America and then discusses the history of the internment process. She includes the anti-Japanese prejudice, the JACL and other information relating to the pre-camp time.
Chapter 2 deals with a description of the physical makeup of the camps, including a breakdown of the number of people in the camps and the male/female makeup. The type of living arrangements is covered along with various problems in the camps.
Chapter 3 concerns the loyalty questionnaire and the registration of the males for the draft. The chapter goes into great detail about the various camps and what happened.
Chapter 4 deals with the segregation of the "no-no's" and includes some very interesting interviews of some of the resisters. The Tule Lake Segregation Center is discussed and again a wealth of detail is included.
Chapter 5 deals with strikes, threats and violence at the camps. Once again there is considerable detail on various problems. This is followed up in Chapter 6, "Suppression," starting off with the use of tanks at the Tule center. The Army crackdown on the leaders of the resistance is discussed. This includes information about a hunger strike and the army putting people in isolation who made any attempt to stand up to them or even questioned things. It also includes information about a great deal of theft carried out by the Army in "dealing" with the protest situation.
Chapter VII continues with the story of Tule Lake, its Coordinating Committee and the problems it faced. The next chapter goes into how an underground movement formed in the camp and what it did. Chapter 9 continues the story of the camp, and the following chapter deals with informers (inu), and the beatings and other violence that happened. The next chapter continues the Tule story, this time concerning itself with the use of the stockade for protesters. The next chapter goes into the issue of renunciation of citizenship and a group of "resegregationists" at Tule. This story is continued in the next chapter of the book, after which the book concludes with an appendix.
This is an extremely detailed book but one which seems to have problems identifying itself. Is it a book on Tule Segregation Center, or is it a book covering the internment process? Or is it a book about Tule with a brief introduction of the internment process to tie into the events at Tule? I would recommend it for anyone interested in the details of life at Tule, especially in relation to the details of the various protests of the "disloyals". It's best if used for that purpose.
Main Index
Japan main page
Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
Japan and World War II index page
|