This book explores how the politics of memory and history affected representations of the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II and the passage of redress legislation in 1988.

Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government wrongfully imprisoned thousands of Japanese American citizens and profited from their labor. Japanese American Incarceration recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation. Following Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066, which called for the exclusion of potentially dangerous groups from military zones along the West Coast, the federal government placed Japanese Americans in makeshift prisons throughout the country. In addition to working on day-to-day operations of the camps, Japanese Americans were coerced into harvesting crops, digging irrigation ditches, paving roads, and building barracks for little to no compensation and often at the behest of privately run businesses—all in the name of national security. How did the U.S. government use incarceration to address labor demands during World War II, and how did imprisoned Japanese Americans respond to the stripping of not only their civil rights, but their labor rights as well? Using a variety of archives and collected oral histories, Japanese American Incarceration uncovers the startling answers to these questions. Stephanie Hinnershitz's timely study connects the government's exploitation of imprisoned Japanese Americans to the history of prison labor in the United States.

This revised and expanded edition of Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress presents the most complete and current published account of the Japanese American experience from the evacuation order of World War II to the public policy debate over redress and reparations. A chronology and comprehensive overview of the Japanese American experience by Roger Daniels are underscored by first person accounts of relocations by Bill Hosokawa, Toyo Suyemoto Kawakami, Barry Saiki, Take Uchida, and others, and previously undescribed events of the interment camps for “enemy aliens” by John Culley and Tetsuden Kashima. The essays bring us up to the U.S. government’s first redress payments, made forty eight years after the incarceration of Japanese Americans began. The combined vision of editors Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H. L. Kitano in pulling together disparate aspects of the Japanese American experience results in a landmark volume in the wrenching experiment of American democracy.

This book analyzes how the politics of memory and history affected representations of the World War II internment of Japanese Americans during the last six decades. It compares attempts by government officials, internees, academics, and activists to control interpretations of internment causes and consequences in congressional hearings, court proceedings, scholarship, popular literature, ethnic community events, monuments, museums, films, and Web sites. Initial accounts celebrated internee loyalty, military patriotism, postwar assimilation, and "model minority" success. Later histories emphasized racist "concentration camps," protests inside the camps, and continued suffering within the community.

In December 1982, a congressionally created commission concluded that the incarceration of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II was the result of racism, war hysteria, and failed political leadership. This book offers a case study of the political, institutional, and external factors that led to the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which demanded redress for the surviving internees.

The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes. The confinement of some 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, often called the Japanese American internment, has been described as the worst official civil rights violation of modern U. S. history. Greg Robinson not only offers a bold new understanding of these events but also studies them within a larger time frame and from a transnational perspective. Drawing on newly discovered material, Robinson provides a backstory of confinement that reveals for the first time the extent of the American government's surveillance of Japanese communities in the years leading up to war and the construction of what officials termed "concentration camps" for enemy aliens. He also considers the aftermath of confinement, including the place of Japanese Americans in postwar civil rights struggles, the long movement by former camp inmates for redress, and the continuing role of the camps as touchstones for nationwide commemoration and debate. Most remarkably, A Tragedy of Democracy is the first book to analyze official policy toward West Coast Japanese Americans within a North American context. Robinson studies confinement on the mainland alongside events in wartime Hawaii, where fears of Japanese Americans justified Army dictatorship, suspension of the Constitution, and the imposition of military tribunals. He similarly reads the treatment of Japanese Americans against Canada's confinement of 22,000 citizens and residents of Japanese ancestry from British Columbia. A Tragedy of Democracy recounts the expulsion of almost 5,000 Japanese from Mexico's Pacific Coast and the poignant story of the Japanese Latin Americans who were kidnapped from their homes and interned in the United States. Approaching Japanese confinement as a continental and international phenomenon, Robinson offers a truly kaleidoscopic understanding of its genesis and outcomes.

Well established on college reading lists, Prisoners Without Trial presents a concise introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. With a new preface, a new epilogue, and expanded recommended readings, Roger Daniels’s updated edition examines a tragic event in our nation’s past and thoughtfully asks if it could happen again. “[A] concise, deft introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.” —Publishers Weekly “More proof that good things can come in small packages... [Daniels] tackle[s] historical issues whose consequences reverberate today. Not only [does he] offer cogent overviews of [the] issues, but [he] is willing to climb out on a critical limb... for instance, writing about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II... ‘this book has tried to explain how and why the outrage happened. That is the role of the historian and his book, which is to analyze the past. But this historian feels that analyzing the past is not always enough’ — and so he takes on the question of ‘could it happen again?’ and concludes that there’s ‘an American propensity to react against “foreigners” in the United States during times of external crisis, especially when those “foreigners” have dark skins,’ and that Japanese-Americans, at least, ‘would argue that what has happened before can surely happen again.’” — Kirkus Reviews “An outstanding resource that provides a clear and concise history of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.” — Alice Yang Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz “Especially in light of the events following September 11, 2001, Roger Daniels has done us a great favor. In a slender book, he tells, with the assurance of a master narrator, an immense story we — all of us — ignore at the peril of our freedoms.” —Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University “No book could be more timely. How, as a different immigrant minority is under racial pressure associated with a feared enemy, the updated Prisoners Without Trial helps us see clearly what lessons we may draw from the past.” — Paul Spickard, author ofJapanese Americans “In the epilogue to the first edition of Prisoners without Trial, Roger Daniels thoughtfully asked, ‘Could it happen again?’ Today, in post-9/11 America, that question has an answer: It can and it has. Daniels addresses these issues in a revised edition of this classic, and he finds the U.S. government perilously close to repeating with the Arab American population mistakes it made with the Japanese Americans.” —Johanna Miller Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock