Despite many social injustices, Japanese Americans are one of the most socioeconomically successful ethnic groups in the United States, having the highest median educational level among both Non-white and white groups, a median income exceeding that of white Americans, and greater likelihood of being employed as professionals than are members of the society as a whole. Given each succeeding generation's increasing rate of assimilation into U.S. society, with its concomitant impact upon ethnic ties and affiliation, the author asks whether or not a distinct Japanese community can be maintained into the fourth generation. This study, which employs a national sample of three generations of Japanese Americans, is the largest of its kind ever undertaken. The volume systematically analyzes the socioeconomic adaptation of the Japanese to U.S. society and develops a sociohistorical model that explains the unfolding of the assimilation process.

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.