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Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II
Well established on college reading lists, Prisoners Without Trial presents a concise introduction to a shameful chapter in American the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. With a new preface, a new epilogue, and expanded recommended readings, Roger Daniels’s updated edition examines a tragic event in our nation’s past and thoughtfully asks if it could happen again.
“[A] concise, deft introduction to a shameful chapter in American the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.” — Publishers Weekly
“More proof that good things can come in small packages... [Daniels] tackle[s] historical issues whose consequences reverberate today. Not only [does he] offer cogent overviews of [the] issues, but [he] is willing to climb out on a critical limb... for instance, writing about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II... ‘this book has tried to explain how and why the outrage happened. That is the role of the historian and his book, which is to analyze the past. But this historian feels that analyzing the past is not always enough’ — and so he takes on the question of ‘could it happen again?’ and concludes that there’s ‘an American propensity to react against “foreigners” in the United States during times of external crisis, especially when those “foreigners” have dark skins,’ and that Japanese-Americans, at least, ‘would argue that what has happened before can surely happen again.’” — Kirkus Reviews
“An outstanding resource that provides a clear and concise history of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.” — Alice Yang Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Especially in light of the events following September 11, 2001, Roger Daniels has done us a great favor. In a slender book, he tells, with the assurance of a master narrator, an immense story we — all of us — ignore at the peril of our freedoms.” — Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University
“No book could be more timely. How, as a different immigrant minority is under racial pressure associated with a feared enemy, the updated Prisoners Without Trial helps us see clearly what lessons we may draw from the past.” — Paul Spickard, author of Japanese Americans
“In the epilogue to the first edition of Prisoners without Trial, Roger Daniels thoughtfully asked, ‘Could it happen again?’ Today, in post-9/11 America, that question has an It can and it has. Daniels addresses these issues in a revised edition of this classic, and he finds the U.S. government perilously close to repeating with the Arab American population mistakes it made with the Japanese Americans.” — Johanna Miller Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
“[A] concise, deft introduction to a shameful chapter in American the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.” — Publishers Weekly
“More proof that good things can come in small packages... [Daniels] tackle[s] historical issues whose consequences reverberate today. Not only [does he] offer cogent overviews of [the] issues, but [he] is willing to climb out on a critical limb... for instance, writing about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II... ‘this book has tried to explain how and why the outrage happened. That is the role of the historian and his book, which is to analyze the past. But this historian feels that analyzing the past is not always enough’ — and so he takes on the question of ‘could it happen again?’ and concludes that there’s ‘an American propensity to react against “foreigners” in the United States during times of external crisis, especially when those “foreigners” have dark skins,’ and that Japanese-Americans, at least, ‘would argue that what has happened before can surely happen again.’” — Kirkus Reviews
“An outstanding resource that provides a clear and concise history of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.” — Alice Yang Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz
“Especially in light of the events following September 11, 2001, Roger Daniels has done us a great favor. In a slender book, he tells, with the assurance of a master narrator, an immense story we — all of us — ignore at the peril of our freedoms.” — Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University
“No book could be more timely. How, as a different immigrant minority is under racial pressure associated with a feared enemy, the updated Prisoners Without Trial helps us see clearly what lessons we may draw from the past.” — Paul Spickard, author of Japanese Americans
“In the epilogue to the first edition of Prisoners without Trial, Roger Daniels thoughtfully asked, ‘Could it happen again?’ Today, in post-9/11 America, that question has an It can and it has. Daniels addresses these issues in a revised edition of this classic, and he finds the U.S. government perilously close to repeating with the Arab American population mistakes it made with the Japanese Americans.” — Johanna Miller Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock
160 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1993
28 people are currently reading
312 people want to read
About the author
Roger Daniels
91 books17 followersA 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.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
March 3, 2026
A masterclass
May 25, 2014
I've had this book on my shelf for a while, since my undergraduate days of majoring in history. It came up when I randomized my "to read" list so I decided to give it a go.
It was relatively short and to the point, which I liked. My interest, as always in history, is the effect an event or time has on the people themselves. I would have liked more details about the camp and the experiences of the people who lived in them. Maybe the intent of this book was to be more of an overview, which I felt it definitely succeeded as.
It was relatively short and to the point, which I liked. My interest, as always in history, is the effect an event or time has on the people themselves. I would have liked more details about the camp and the experiences of the people who lived in them. Maybe the intent of this book was to be more of an overview, which I felt it definitely succeeded as.
October 1, 2010
This book gives a clear chronology of the events that led up to internment to the final redress payments a couple of years ago. It also shows how racism and xenophobia from the 19th century caused the mass hysteria, and also examines if this could happen in the U.S. again. It was a quick, informative read, but I would have enjoyed more from the prospective of those who where interned.
February 1, 2020
I really wanted to know more about this awful chapter in American history. While there are some interesting facts and some pages that kept my attention, it was mostly written like a school text book. I was disappointed in the writing. I hope to find another book on this topic that is more engaging.
October 28, 2023
Three stars is generous for this slogging, academically written, frankly smug piece of editorial history. While offering some interesting historical detail on Japanese internment during world war two, the historians outrage over it ever having happened overwhelms the horrors of the actual experience from the voices of the inmates and the justifications or shame of the politicans and military personnel. This is a short, preachy work by a professor of history no doubt I would have loathed and taken a terrible counterpoint just to hear his seething outrage. I agree with most of his judgments, but as a historian attempting to explain the circumstances and reality of this national scar on the idea of the United States, it fails.
December 16, 2019
While there is definitely bias present in this telling of the Japanese Americans incarceration during WWII, it is one I agree with. The history is told clearly and concisely and this book will teach you very clearly what happened in the US to Japanese Americans when they were wrongly incarcerated by the United States government
January 7, 2026
Excellent
Daniel makes it very clear that this episode in American history was racist in every respect. The end of this book is extremely important as he shows that this treatment of non-whites is a part of this country's DNA
Daniel makes it very clear that this episode in American history was racist in every respect. The end of this book is extremely important as he shows that this treatment of non-whites is a part of this country's DNA
June 15, 2018
Good information written with the liveliness of a wikipedia article.
March 3, 2020
Dry, but cogent and heartbreaking and... what’s the point of living if this is how we treat each other?
April 26, 2020
Concise, yet informative. He writes with remarkable clarity and relevance; he must be quite the professor.
December 29, 2021
3.5 stars
January 25, 2016
This is another book on the internment of the Japanese Americans during World War II. The book goes into the background leading up to the internment, the internment itself, and what happened afterwards.
As with my other reviews, I'll concentrate on things this book presents that I other books tend to miss entirely or gloss over. I'll put my comments on things in ( ) to distinguish them from what the author actually said.
The history leading up to the internment is one basically of anti-Oriental prejudice, starting with the anti-Chinese prejudice in this country, particularly on the West Coast. This prejudice was basically transferred over to the Japanese after the Chinese were barred from immigrating, and it was a prejudice that was felt by many people. The author notes that, in California, the Republicans, the Democrats, and a third political party, the Populist, along with the American Federation of Labor were all against Japanese immigration in 1900. The San Francisco Chronicle paper began a series of virulent attacks on the Japanese in America in 1905, matching some of the worst tabloid trash-type journalism that anyone has ever seen.
The result was to further inflame public opinion which the politicians were then more than willing to use to further their own purposes. The author adds that Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected President and was quite anti-Japanese.
A very interesting thing is a breakdown of the types of businesses persons of Japanese ancestry were involved in in the city of Seattle (which was probably fairly representative of the businesses they were involved in in other cities.)
They ran hotels, grocery stores, dry cleaners, market stands, produce houses, restaurants, barbershops, laundries or gardening services. A lot of them were also involved in farming in rural communities. (Note that none of these is in any way, shape or form involved with military things or would threaten the US in case of war.)
The author talks about the war in Europe and how fast Hitler's victories were. There was a belief in American government agencies that this happened because there was a vast “fifth column” of saboteurs and subversives that helped him, which was something that was totally untrue. (This same type of thinking, that the military of the “good” countries could not have lost so easily unless they were betrayed, was carried over into the attack on Pearl Harbor where, for a long while, the belief was that it was not our military's fault at all for not being ready; it was all due to a massive number of persons of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii that aided the attacking planes. That, also, was totally disproven later, but was useful to the politicians for inflaming public opinion against the Japanese Americans.)
There was a proposal to let the Japanese Americans stay on the West Coast and just keep them away from any “sensitive” areas, but the politicians and hate-mongers were against such a limited program, wanting the “Jap problem” to be dealt with once and for all.
Soon after Pearl Harbor the draft boards began classifying Japanese Americans as 4-C, which is a category reserved for enemy aliens.
The author also points out that, if it was so necessary for military reasons to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast then that would have been even more true for the Japanese Americans in Hawaii where they formed almost a third of the population. The persons of Japanese Ancestry in California, though, only formed 2% of the population. (So it should have been around 16 times as necessary to “deal” with the Japanese Americans in Hawaii than those on the West Coast if it was so powerfully militarily necessary.)
The author goes into the internment camp descriptions and breaks everything down into four phases (which I haven't seen anyone else do.)
Phase 1: Settling in (spring 1942-February 1943.)
Phase 2: Registration/segregation crisis (Feb. 1943-Jan. 1944)
Phase 3: Draft crisis (Jan. 1944-Nov. 1945)
Phase 4: Leaving camp (summer 1942-March 1946).
As far as students leaving the camps and going to college, the author points out that Princeton and MIT refused to admit Japanese Americans in 1942. Eventually around 4,300 students did find their way into colleges.
Some 600 of the evacuees eventually settled in Cincinnati with no trouble.
There's a very good chapter on whether or not such a thing could happen again, and the author points out relatively recent events in which people of one nationality or another were interrogated by the FBI or some preliminary moves to setting some kind of program or other were made.
There's also a section of some photos.
As with my other reviews, I'll concentrate on things this book presents that I other books tend to miss entirely or gloss over. I'll put my comments on things in ( ) to distinguish them from what the author actually said.
The history leading up to the internment is one basically of anti-Oriental prejudice, starting with the anti-Chinese prejudice in this country, particularly on the West Coast. This prejudice was basically transferred over to the Japanese after the Chinese were barred from immigrating, and it was a prejudice that was felt by many people. The author notes that, in California, the Republicans, the Democrats, and a third political party, the Populist, along with the American Federation of Labor were all against Japanese immigration in 1900. The San Francisco Chronicle paper began a series of virulent attacks on the Japanese in America in 1905, matching some of the worst tabloid trash-type journalism that anyone has ever seen.
The result was to further inflame public opinion which the politicians were then more than willing to use to further their own purposes. The author adds that Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was elected President and was quite anti-Japanese.
A very interesting thing is a breakdown of the types of businesses persons of Japanese ancestry were involved in in the city of Seattle (which was probably fairly representative of the businesses they were involved in in other cities.)
They ran hotels, grocery stores, dry cleaners, market stands, produce houses, restaurants, barbershops, laundries or gardening services. A lot of them were also involved in farming in rural communities. (Note that none of these is in any way, shape or form involved with military things or would threaten the US in case of war.)
The author talks about the war in Europe and how fast Hitler's victories were. There was a belief in American government agencies that this happened because there was a vast “fifth column” of saboteurs and subversives that helped him, which was something that was totally untrue. (This same type of thinking, that the military of the “good” countries could not have lost so easily unless they were betrayed, was carried over into the attack on Pearl Harbor where, for a long while, the belief was that it was not our military's fault at all for not being ready; it was all due to a massive number of persons of Japanese ancestry living in Hawaii that aided the attacking planes. That, also, was totally disproven later, but was useful to the politicians for inflaming public opinion against the Japanese Americans.)
There was a proposal to let the Japanese Americans stay on the West Coast and just keep them away from any “sensitive” areas, but the politicians and hate-mongers were against such a limited program, wanting the “Jap problem” to be dealt with once and for all.
Soon after Pearl Harbor the draft boards began classifying Japanese Americans as 4-C, which is a category reserved for enemy aliens.
The author also points out that, if it was so necessary for military reasons to remove Japanese Americans from the West Coast then that would have been even more true for the Japanese Americans in Hawaii where they formed almost a third of the population. The persons of Japanese Ancestry in California, though, only formed 2% of the population. (So it should have been around 16 times as necessary to “deal” with the Japanese Americans in Hawaii than those on the West Coast if it was so powerfully militarily necessary.)
The author goes into the internment camp descriptions and breaks everything down into four phases (which I haven't seen anyone else do.)
Phase 1: Settling in (spring 1942-February 1943.)
Phase 2: Registration/segregation crisis (Feb. 1943-Jan. 1944)
Phase 3: Draft crisis (Jan. 1944-Nov. 1945)
Phase 4: Leaving camp (summer 1942-March 1946).
As far as students leaving the camps and going to college, the author points out that Princeton and MIT refused to admit Japanese Americans in 1942. Eventually around 4,300 students did find their way into colleges.
Some 600 of the evacuees eventually settled in Cincinnati with no trouble.
There's a very good chapter on whether or not such a thing could happen again, and the author points out relatively recent events in which people of one nationality or another were interrogated by the FBI or some preliminary moves to setting some kind of program or other were made.
There's also a section of some photos.
March 10, 2025
Had to read the first four chapters for a class, so I decided to finish out the book. Learned a lot of new things about internment during WWII.
October 13, 2015
I think everyone has heard in passing about the Japanese Concentration camps that America set up after the bombings of Pearl Harbor but I for one was never taught about or really knew much about what these camps were or what happened to the people in the camps or anything really.
After reading this book I understand where these camps where, what life was like in the camps, the questions that the US government faced these Japanese Americans with and how they responded to all of this. How would you react when the country you live in no longer trusts you so they herd you like cattle into small rooms that you can now called home because the home country of your parents decided to attack in a time of war?
This book gives a clear chronological of the arrest of the Japanese people to what happened after the war and even in more modern times.
After reading this book I understand where these camps where, what life was like in the camps, the questions that the US government faced these Japanese Americans with and how they responded to all of this. How would you react when the country you live in no longer trusts you so they herd you like cattle into small rooms that you can now called home because the home country of your parents decided to attack in a time of war?
This book gives a clear chronological of the arrest of the Japanese people to what happened after the war and even in more modern times.
November 9, 2012
This short, but very informative book is a great read. It illuminates the specific background, sequence of events, responsible people, and beliefs that surrounded the detainment of some 100,000+ Japanese Americans into concentration camps starting in 1942 and lasting until 1946. Daniels uses an authoritative and informed voice with plenty to say about all the people involved, both within and outside the camps. The massive contradiction of Japanese American soldiers serving in the highly decorated 442nd Infantry Regiment while their family remained behind barbed wire in camps in the country they were "fighting for" is glaringly shown in this history.
June 24, 2015
A brief evaluation of American internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. The author addresses the history of anti-Asian racism starting in the mid-1800s as well as reasons for the relocation of the Japanese-Americans. He discusses reasons for their release beginning in 1942 but ignores the 442nd "Go For Broke" Regiment when discussing Army participation and just focuses on the language school. He also address political aaftermathx. This was a superficial treatment of the internments and some of the data is incomplete.
September 25, 2009
I read this book during my History of California class while in grad school...it was eye-opening, even (hell, especially) for someone who has lived in California for most of their lifetime. It speaks volumes about the mentality of the United States from the 1940s to present day...
February 2, 2017
I could not finish this book. I was looking for something with a little more story. Only gave it 4 stars because it is perfect for a history class or paper. Very informative, but little there to connect the reader to the issue.
December 31, 2016
A clear chronology of a blemish upon the history of America. Having read this in conjunction with other sources for a class on World War II in the Pacific, the events leading up to Executive Order 9066 are all shown here. A must read for anyone wanting to know about America's Internment Camps.
April 10, 2017
The entirety of this book isn't easy to read: sometimes because of the utterly terrible and racist injustice the US government perpetrated against Japanese Americans and other times because the writing was dry, rote fact filled with names of military personnel I'll never care to remember. I'm not one for history books that have a bunch of dates and names and this person called this person who called that person who was this person's superior but then that person... and you know what I mean. The incarceration of Japanese Americans was a highly political act, which explains why Daniel would include such boring (though very informational) chapters. I would definitely recommend this to anyone looking to write a paper on this event or about WW2 in general since many people of high status in important WW2 departments are mentioned. And even to those like me who are interested in learning more about this infamous historic event, I'd still recommend it to. I'd just say: some chapters are pretty bureaucratic and boring.
Still! I learned a lot about the Japanese Americans. I particularly liked Daniels argument that the Japanese American incarceration is directly related to the anti-Asian sentiment/racism latent in American history, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Though Japanese Americans are labeled as a model race by Western/white media and conditions for Japanese Americans have definitely improved since the war hysteria from WW2, I would argue that this glorifying of the Japanese is just a different manifestation of a latent and persistent racism. White Americans may not think of them as a violent threat anymore; instead they are thought of as obedient minorities rather than equals.
Still! I learned a lot about the Japanese Americans. I particularly liked Daniels argument that the Japanese American incarceration is directly related to the anti-Asian sentiment/racism latent in American history, beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act. Though Japanese Americans are labeled as a model race by Western/white media and conditions for Japanese Americans have definitely improved since the war hysteria from WW2, I would argue that this glorifying of the Japanese is just a different manifestation of a latent and persistent racism. White Americans may not think of them as a violent threat anymore; instead they are thought of as obedient minorities rather than equals.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews