Since 1855, nearly half a million Japanese immigrants have settled in the United States, and today more than twice that number claim Japanese ancestry. While these immigrants worked hard, established networks, and repeatedly distinguished themselves as entrepreneurs, they also encountered harsh discrimination. Nowhere was this more evident than on the West Coast during World War II, when virtually the entire population of Japanese Americans was forced into internment camps solely on the basis of ethnicity.

Anne M. Blankenship's study of Christianity in the infamous camps where Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II yields insights both far-reaching and timely. While most Japanese Americans maintained their traditional identities as Buddhists, a sizeable minority identified as Christian, and a number of church leaders sought to minister to them in the camps. Blankenship shows how church leaders were forced to assess the ethics and pragmatism of fighting against or acquiescing to what they clearly perceived, even in the midst of a national crisis, as an unjust social system. These religious activists became acutely aware of the impact of government, as well as church, policies that targeted ordinary Americans of diverse ethnicities. Going through the doors of the camp churches and delving deeply into the religious experiences of the incarcerated and the faithful who aided them, Blankenship argues that the incarceration period introduced new social and legal approaches for Christians of all stripes to challenge the constitutionality of government policies on race and civil rights. She also shows how the camp experience nourished the roots of an Asian American liberation theology that sprouted in the sixties and seventies.

Asian American Christian churches have been serving Asian immigrants not only as their "spiritual home" providing nurture, comfort and uplifting of spirituality during their times of adjustment but also as a generative womb leading the alienated immigrants toward a meaningful integration into the larger society. The articles included here attempt to provide theoretical and theological foundations for understanding the Asian American predicament, and explore psychosocial experiences individually and collectively. Also included are articles, which relate theological and biblical insights to the unique experiences of the Asian American faith communities with the hope to reconstruct a better future.

Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion A Los Angeles Times Bestseller “Raises timely and important questions about what religious freedom in America truly means.” —Ruth Ozeki “A must-read for anyone interested in the implacable quest for civil liberties, social and racial justice, religious freedom, and American belonging.” —George Takei On December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, the first person detained was the leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai‘i. Nearly all Japanese Americans were subject to accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. From the White House to the local town council, many believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security. In this pathbreaking account, based on personal accounts and extensive research in untapped archives, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American. “A searingly instructive story...from which all Americans might learn.” —Smithsonian “Williams’ moving account shows how Japanese Americans transformed Buddhism into an American religion, and, through that struggle, changed the United States for the better.” —Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer “Reading this book, one cannot help but think of the current racial and religious tensions that have gripped this nation—and shudder.” —Reza Aslan, author of Zealot

Asian and Pacific Islander Americans constitute the fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are also one of the most religiously diverse. Through them Asian traditions such as Hinduism, Sikhism, Confucianism, and Buddhism have been introduced into every major city and across a wide swath of Middle America. The contributors to this volume provide an essential inter-disciplinary resource for the study of Asian and Pacific Islander American religion.

Concerned with people called variously: eta, burakumin, buraku jumin, buraku people, outcastes, or "the lowest of the low", this book examines how their experience of caste/status-based discrimination in 19th century Japan affected their experience of race-based discrimination in the West of the US and Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

First Published in 2001. This anthology of western history articles emphasizes the New Western History that emerged in the 1980s and adds to it a heavy dose of legal history, a field frequently ignored or misunderstood by the New Western historians. From first contact, American Indians knew that Europeans did not understand the gendered nature of America. Confusion regarding the role of women within tribes and bands continued from first contact well into the late nineteenth century. The journal articles that follow give readers a true sense of the gendered West. Racial and ethnic heritage played a role in female experience whether Hispanic, Japanese or Irish. Women's work was part western history, but women did not confine themselves to plow handles or brothels. Women were very much a part of most occupations or in the process of breaking down barriers of access. They worked in the fields for wages as well as for family welfare and prosperity. Women demanded access to the professions whether teaching or law, accounting or medicine. The process of eliminating barriers varied in time and space, but the struggle was constant. Yet the story of women in polygamous Utah or Idaho was different and an integral part of the fabric of western history. Because of their beliefs and practices these women suffered at the hands of the federal government and persevered.