Life Behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei

by Yasutaro Soga, Keiho Soga (Introduction)

Yasutaro Soga's Life behind Barbed Wire (Tessaku seikatsu) is an exceptional firsthand account of the incarceration of a Hawai'i Japanese during World War II. On the evening of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Soga, the editor of a Japanese-language newspaper, was arrested along with several hundred other prominent Issei ( Japanese immigrants) in Hawai'i. After being held for six months on Sand Island, Soga was transferred to an Army camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and later to a Justice Department camp in Santa Fe. He would spend just under four years in custody before returning to Hawai'i in the months following the end of the war.



Most of what has been written about the detention of Japanese Americans focuses on the Nisei experience of mass internment on the West Coast--largely because of the language barrier immigrant writers faced. This translation, therefore, presents us with a rare Issei voice on internment, and Soga's opinions challenge many commonly held assumptions about Japanese Americans during the war regarding race relations, patriotism, and loyalty.

Although centered on one man's experience, Life behind Barbed Wire benefits greatly from Soga's trained eye and instincts as a professional journalist, which allowed him to paint a larger picture of those extraordinary times and his place in them. The Introduction by Tetsuden Kashima of the University of Washington and Foreword by Dennis Ogawa of the University of Hawai'i provide context for Soga's recollections based on the most current scholarship on the Japanese American internment.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir

272 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

Reviews

[Geve_ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wonder how much of this type of thing we lack today. A journalist interned for being Japanese in Honolulu just after the attack on pearl harbor, he didn't keep a journal, but wrote these anecdotes from memory and published them in his paper in Hawaii after release. It's not the linear story of his experience, and not taken from a diary. Most of the anecdotes are 1-4 pages, and follow along from the attack until his eventual return to Honolulu. It doesn't read like a full narrative, because it isn't. I think it would have been interesting to read these once a week, or even as a daily piece in a paper at the time, but taken together, it didn't build on itself the same way an intentional singular piece would. I found it interesting in parts, and other parts would be more useful as reference. It was very interesting to read about the fellow internees attitudes throughout the ordeal, and their interactions with each as well as the other prisoners and their guards. I found the ending particularly compelling, with the defeat of Japan, the way so many of the internees just completely disbelieved the truth of it was astounding. Tying your identity to the unbeatable strength of your nation or ethnicity, then having it defeated is too much of a blow for some apparently. It's easier to live in a lie when you've already been indoctrinated into the cult of nationalism. I can't imagine another such scenario ever happening (/s).

As always, same shit, different day. I should probably stop reading shit that is so fucking timely.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Kahana Ho · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inside USofA’s internment camps.

Yasutaro Soga was wrongfully denied his civil liberties simply due to his Nationality. There never was any due process for thousands of Japanese and Americans of Japanaese Ancestry. These types of internment and concentration camps only breed distrust and anger towards the interning government. they were not prisoners of war or convicted criminals, yet they were imprisoned, in Soga’s case, from the first day of the war (he was being surveilled based on racial profiling), until well after the end of hostilities.

the us continues such practice to this day.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

One day you're happy and busy, engaging in life, going to work every day, taking care of your family. Living the good life in Honolulu. Then Pearl Harbor is bombed. Several hours later you are picked up, at gun point, taken away, and placed in an internment camp No trial. No nothing. For weeks your family doesn't know if you are dead or alive. And you then are held there for almost 4 years. Yoshutaro shares all this, and more, in this well written history.