Voices From the Camps, by Larry Dane Brimner

Voices From the Camps: Internment of Japanese Americans During World War II, by Larry Dane Brimner
Franklin Watts, 1994
95 pages, plus 32 b&w photos, Source Notes, Glossary, Selected Bibliography
Library: 940.53 BRI

Front matter
The bombing of Pear Harbor by the Japanese air force on December 7, 1941 which crippled the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet and killed more than 2,400 American sailors, is well known. However, another casualty of the attack on Pear Harbor has, until recently, been ignored. Within hours of the bombing, some Japanese Americans were taken into custody by the FBI for no other reason than their race. Ten weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that permitted a roundup of Japanese Americans. With total disregard for the Bill of Rights, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry - two-thirds of them citizens-were forced out of their homes and into so-called relocation centers, the government's term for prison camps. Their only crime was their Japanese origin. The other casualty of Pearl Harbor was the legal rights and their freedom of Japanese Americans.

Although Germany and Italy declared war on the United States three days after Pearl Harbor, Americans of German and Italian origins were never suspected of disloyalty, much less herded into prison camps. And none other than J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, declared that there was no basis for suspicion of Japanese Americans disloyalty. The cruel treatment of the Japanese Americans during WWII had only one cause - racism.

In this moving book, Japanese Americans tell in their own words of their experiences during the evacuation to internment camps. Many Japanese small-business owners were forced to sell, at cut-rate prices, the enterprises they had spent their lives building. Children spent their formative years in barracks surrounded by barbed wire. In some cases, entire families were torn apart.

The many voices from the camps in this book remind Americans of a part of their history that until recently has been ignored.

Table of Contents
1. A Date Which Will Live in Infamy
2. Not Bona Fide Citizens
3. It Just Couldn't Happen in a Democracy
4. Democracy Can Be An Illusion
5. Even God in Heaven is Crying For Us
6. To Become Equal With Others
7. I Don't Want Any of Them Here
8. The Burden of Shame
Afterword
Source Notes
Glossary
Selected Bibliography
Index

Photos
--Chine workers building railroad, unidentified location
--Unidentified Japanese farmers in California
--6 Japanese picture brides and unidentified American officials
--Ships in Pearl Harbor on fire, Dec 7, 1941
--Franklin Delano Roosevelt and unidentified official
--unidentified FBI agent, Japanese man and woman
--Wanto Co, "I am an American" sign
--Asahi Dyeworks
--Relocation Orders posted
--5 unidentified Japanese Americans in line
--Hayami's Nursery and Pansy Gardens for sale
--Unidentified Japanese family waiting to go to relocation center
--Unidentified Nisei boy
--Unidentified Nisei getting on buses
----Unidentified mother and two children
--Two unidentified children
--Unidentified internment camp, with armed soldiers waiting
--Unidentified Japanese couple
--Unidentified Japanese teens behind barbed wire
--Unidentified Nisei girls going to school
--Unidentified Nisei couples dancing
--Unidentified Nisei translators (male and female)
--Unidentified Japanese watchmaker
--Nisei troops in Italy
--Nisei soldier visits internment camp
--General Joseph Stillwell presenting medal to Mary Masuda, sister of Sergeant Kazuo Masuda, unidentified Japanese and American officers in background
--unidentified Japanese signing papers to return to Japan
--Gordon Hirabayashi
--unidentified family members of Minoru Yasui
--Attorney General Richard Thornburgh presenting checks to elderly Japanese internment victims
--Camp cemetery at Manzanar