Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military During World War II

This is a 2003 book about the Japanese American women that ended up in the American military during the Second World War. The book is 211 pages long. 44 of those pages are taken up with appendices, a glossary, notes, a bibliography and an index. The first 87 pages of the book are really background material that anyone familiar with the Japanese American situation during and before the war would already have read elsewhere which then leaves less than half the book actually dealing with the Nisei women in the military.

The author spends some time discussing the difference between how Japanese American women and Black women were treated in relation to general things and to the military. The author talks about how the women were recruited, and how many from each internment camp were interested in joining. The exact total of how many women joined is somewhat unclear but it was not a great number.

The author then discusses what happened to the women once they joined, including basic training and the types of jobs they were used in. (Mainly non-combat secretarial and translation type jobs.) Some of the women also ended up in various medical positions.

The author then discusses what happened to the women after the war ended.

The book is somewhat interesting but it seems almost more like a thesis than a regular book.



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