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Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II
One of the Washington Post 's Top Nonfiction Titles of 2001
In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.
In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.
250 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2001
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About the author
Eric L. Muller
9 books3 followersEric L. Muller is Dan K. Moore Distinguished Professor in Jurisprudence and Ethics at the University of North Carolina School of Law and director of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Faculty Excellence. He is editor of Colors of Confinement: Rare Kodachrome Photographs of Japanese American Incarceration in World War II and author of Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 22, 2016
Eric L. Muller, 2001
It starts off quite interesting since the author is Jewish and the son of German immigrants who had to flee Nazi Germany. After they settled here and the war started, though, they were relisted as "enemy aliens," their farm searched and they were prohibited from traveling more than five miles from their farm.
The author talks about the drafting of the Nisei and how they faced a terrible choice; either they fight against the country of their ancestry or they refused and became subject to prosecution. They were behind barbed wire, held prisoners by the U.S. because of their ancestry and yet, at the same time, they were expected to be willing to join the U.S. military and fight against Japan. How many people would be expected to agree to fight for a country that had you and your family locked up in a prison camp simply because you had relatives that were born in a country the U.S. was at war with, even though you, yourself, were a full-blown U.S. citizen?
It's fairly easy to see why some refused to be drafted.
More than 300 Japanese from the ten camps became draft resisters. They were arrested and tried in 1944 and almost without exception were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of two to five years. The author goes into the history of the JACL also. Then he talks about individual reactions to Pearl Harbor and the FBI crackdown on the Nisei and Issei.
Next the author discusses the curfew, the assembly centers and then the relocation centers. On Feb. 1, 1943, FDR announced that a segregated combat unit would be formed for the Nisei. What is significant is that the government wanted the Nisei to start volunteering while they had basically just a short time before had removed the Nisei from the military or put them into dead-end type jobs. So not only did the Nisei have to consider that they were behind barbed wire but the government that originally didn't even want them in the military suddenly expected them to be gung-ho for getting into the military.
The military actually expected that about one of every three male Nisei (of proper age) in the camps would be willing to volunteer. This is, of course, when they decide to come up with the infamous loyalty questionnaire that just caused even more trouble about the Nisei.
The situations at the different camps is talked about including some trouble at the Tule Lake center. Then matters worsened when the volunteer movement didn't get as many volunteers as the military wanted so they said they would start drafting the Nisei.
Again, the author examines what happened at some of the camps, especially in relation to those who refused to report for duty. The government was also threatening those who defied the military with imprisonment. The author also deals with specific people rather than just general numbers.
The types of tactics that the government used to try to silence and control the resisters are, in general, quite disgusting and do not make for pleasant reading.
The trial of 63 resisters from Heart Mountain is talked about, especially the part where the judge referred to the defendants as "you Jap boys." Not saying much for fairness or impartiality. (Apparently the judge didn't care much for blacks or Jews, either.)
The various trials the resisters from various camps underwent is discussed in considerable detail. It follows this with a discussion of the prisons the men were sent to when they were found guilty.
For anyone interested in the legal aspects of the draft resistance movement, what led up to it and its aftermath, this is an excellent book to read.
The book notes that even many of the lawyers hired to defend the young men did not like persons of Japanese ancestry and would take little if any part at all in their actual defense.
It starts off quite interesting since the author is Jewish and the son of German immigrants who had to flee Nazi Germany. After they settled here and the war started, though, they were relisted as "enemy aliens," their farm searched and they were prohibited from traveling more than five miles from their farm.
The author talks about the drafting of the Nisei and how they faced a terrible choice; either they fight against the country of their ancestry or they refused and became subject to prosecution. They were behind barbed wire, held prisoners by the U.S. because of their ancestry and yet, at the same time, they were expected to be willing to join the U.S. military and fight against Japan. How many people would be expected to agree to fight for a country that had you and your family locked up in a prison camp simply because you had relatives that were born in a country the U.S. was at war with, even though you, yourself, were a full-blown U.S. citizen?
It's fairly easy to see why some refused to be drafted.
More than 300 Japanese from the ten camps became draft resisters. They were arrested and tried in 1944 and almost without exception were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms of two to five years. The author goes into the history of the JACL also. Then he talks about individual reactions to Pearl Harbor and the FBI crackdown on the Nisei and Issei.
Next the author discusses the curfew, the assembly centers and then the relocation centers. On Feb. 1, 1943, FDR announced that a segregated combat unit would be formed for the Nisei. What is significant is that the government wanted the Nisei to start volunteering while they had basically just a short time before had removed the Nisei from the military or put them into dead-end type jobs. So not only did the Nisei have to consider that they were behind barbed wire but the government that originally didn't even want them in the military suddenly expected them to be gung-ho for getting into the military.
The military actually expected that about one of every three male Nisei (of proper age) in the camps would be willing to volunteer. This is, of course, when they decide to come up with the infamous loyalty questionnaire that just caused even more trouble about the Nisei.
The situations at the different camps is talked about including some trouble at the Tule Lake center. Then matters worsened when the volunteer movement didn't get as many volunteers as the military wanted so they said they would start drafting the Nisei.
Again, the author examines what happened at some of the camps, especially in relation to those who refused to report for duty. The government was also threatening those who defied the military with imprisonment. The author also deals with specific people rather than just general numbers.
The types of tactics that the government used to try to silence and control the resisters are, in general, quite disgusting and do not make for pleasant reading.
The trial of 63 resisters from Heart Mountain is talked about, especially the part where the judge referred to the defendants as "you Jap boys." Not saying much for fairness or impartiality. (Apparently the judge didn't care much for blacks or Jews, either.)
The various trials the resisters from various camps underwent is discussed in considerable detail. It follows this with a discussion of the prisons the men were sent to when they were found guilty.
For anyone interested in the legal aspects of the draft resistance movement, what led up to it and its aftermath, this is an excellent book to read.
The book notes that even many of the lawyers hired to defend the young men did not like persons of Japanese ancestry and would take little if any part at all in their actual defense.
August 30, 2024
I used this book as a source for a history project. It was the only secondary source I found that had detailed accounts of what happened, and definitely the only book. I got a lot out of it, and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to learn more about the topic. It gives tremendous details and has many references that can be used for further learning or research.
September 12, 2014
Quotable:
[E]very Nisei (first generation Japanese American) had grown up hearing his Issei parents recite the phases shikata ganai and gaman suru – “it can’t be helped” and “just endure it.” It was thus a virtue, or at least a feature, of Japanese culture to accept what could not be changed. It was also a virtue of Japanese culture not to do things that draw the attention of others: “The nail that sticks up,” explained the Issei to their children, “gets hammered.”
Yosh Kuromiya received his notice to report for a preinduction physical on March 16, 1944. He regarded the notice “as yet another insult.” “How could I continue to go along with this morally corrupt charade?” he asked himself. Kuromiya felt that he was “being asked, not to serve in defense of my country, but in a war of aggression in foreign lands, ostensibly for principles I was denied here at home,” and all of this was “presented as an opportunity to ‘prove my loyalty.’”
Never before had the United States tried to force into the line of fire a group of young men it had corralled and confined on suspicion of disloyalty to the United States. Never before had the government taken from a person virtually all of the benefits of his citizenship on account of his ethnic origin and then sought nonetheless to impose on him citizenship’s greatest burden. And to the extent that history offered anything like precedents for the government would undoubtedly have been loathe to cite – the Confederacy’s impressing of slaves into menial labor during the Civil War, perhaps, or the government’s drafting of Native Americans from off of reservations during World War I.
[E]very Nisei (first generation Japanese American) had grown up hearing his Issei parents recite the phases shikata ganai and gaman suru – “it can’t be helped” and “just endure it.” It was thus a virtue, or at least a feature, of Japanese culture to accept what could not be changed. It was also a virtue of Japanese culture not to do things that draw the attention of others: “The nail that sticks up,” explained the Issei to their children, “gets hammered.”
Yosh Kuromiya received his notice to report for a preinduction physical on March 16, 1944. He regarded the notice “as yet another insult.” “How could I continue to go along with this morally corrupt charade?” he asked himself. Kuromiya felt that he was “being asked, not to serve in defense of my country, but in a war of aggression in foreign lands, ostensibly for principles I was denied here at home,” and all of this was “presented as an opportunity to ‘prove my loyalty.’”
Never before had the United States tried to force into the line of fire a group of young men it had corralled and confined on suspicion of disloyalty to the United States. Never before had the government taken from a person virtually all of the benefits of his citizenship on account of his ethnic origin and then sought nonetheless to impose on him citizenship’s greatest burden. And to the extent that history offered anything like precedents for the government would undoubtedly have been loathe to cite – the Confederacy’s impressing of slaves into menial labor during the Civil War, perhaps, or the government’s drafting of Native Americans from off of reservations during World War I.
May 7, 2013
The book is hard to get in from a few chapters, but It's a sad book to read. I'm currently in the middle of the book and beyond shocked of what the soldiers done to the little kids. However there was only one man who surviveded the world war shooting. He writes down what he sees and it's like your with him in the war with other 200,000 men.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews