Concentration Camps, North America: Japanese in the United States and Canada During World War II

by Roger Daniels

In the early months of 1942 the United States government assembled and shipped off the concentration camps 112,000 men, women, and children, the entire Japanese American population of the three Pacific Coast states of California, Oregon, and Washington. This book is an attempt to tell their story. To examine and explain the Japanese American experience in World War II is to examine one aspect of American racism, an aspect that is, fortunately, now largely relate to the pages of history rather than the pages of the daily newspaper. But the larger phenomenon of a generally racist society remains, and if the reader draws from the relatively "happy ending" of the Japanese American experience an analogy about the larger aspects of American racism, he will be guilty of the same kind of smug self-congratulation that allows the establishment of the ten concentration camps for American Citizens on American soil to be written off as a "mistake."

Genres: World War II

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

A past president of the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era as well as the Immigration History Society, Roger Daniels is the Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Cincinnati. He served as a consultant to the Presidential Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians and is a planning committee member for the immigration museum on Ellis Island.

Reviews

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the last few elections have shown (and pretty much the reaction to the Obama Administration) America is a racist nation. From the time of the first landing of Europeans those groups (usually minorities) that were different from the Europeans were considered inferior and only useful for menial labor or to be subjected to segregation. Most Americans recognize that slavery followed by Jim Crow laws and forced resettlement of Native Americans occurred. Many will know that laws have been passed to restrict immigration by various groups. Few will want to learn the US and Canada essentially ran concentration camps for those of Asian descent.
This book is a 1981 reprint of a 1971 edition and includes updated material to include Canada. As an introduction to subject the author provides a history of anti-Asian prejudice in both countries. The histories are not dissimilar. Both countries placed caps on immigration and denied citizenship to immigrants at one point or another. In both countries Asians were concentrated on the Pacific Coast. Discrimination took a variety of forms in each country. When World War II came most individuals of Japanese ancestry were forced to sell their property to white scavengers at greatly reduced prices and/or had their property confiscated.
Unfortnuately not enough is taught about the dark side of American history. It is only in upper level college courses and independent reading that one gains a truer picture of history. Though one get obtain vignettes of portions such as George Takei's a new musical "Allegiance" which provides a picture of life in one of the Concentration Camps to which people of Japanese descent were sent.