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Adios to Tears: The Memoirs of a Japanese-Peruvian Internee in U.S. Concentration Camps
Adios to Tears is the very personal story of Seiichi Higashide (1909-97), whose life in three countries was shaped by a bizarre and little-known episode in the history of World War II. Born in Hokkaido, Higashide emigrated to Peru in 1931. By the late 1930s he was a shopkeeper and community leader in the provincial town of Ica, but following the outbreak of World War II, he -- along with other Latin American Japanese -- was seized by police and forcibly deported to the United States. He was interned behind barbed wire at the Immigration and Naturalization Service facility in Crystal City, Texas, for more than two years.
After his release, Higashide elected to stay in the U S. and eventually became a citizen. For years, he was a leader in the effort to obtain redress from the American government for the violation of the human rights of the Peruvian Japanese internees.
272 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 10, 2021
Seiichi Higashide wrote his memoir to serve as a record of his life and to spread information about what Japanese immigrants went through in Latin America. Higashide shares what life was like for him and the other immigrants who moved to a country without knowing the language and having few connections. Immigrants came to Latin America with the hope of creating a better life for themselves and their families but hardships were often a part of an immigrant's life. The work was originally published in Japanese, later into English, then Spanish. The memoir was written for Japanese, Japanese-Peruvians, Asian immigrants, and those who want to learn more about Asian immigration during the twentieth century.
The memoir begins by relating the background history of his family before he was born. Higashide was born in 1909 in Hokkaido. He recounts his early life in Japan where he worked on his father’s farm. The author grew up poor. Because he valued education so highly, he worked very hard to put himself through night school after graduating middle school. This memoir follows Higashide from his home country of Japan, to Peru, and then his forced deportation to the United States.
Higashide retells the hardships he endured just to attend night school in Japan, to obtain the correct paperwork to immigrate to Peru, and immigrate to a country where he was not proficient in the language. The author always worked hard whether that be on his father’s farm in Japan, when he started his own retail business in Peru, or transitioning to life in the United States after WWII where he taught himself to speak a third language. Higashide highlights the differences in generations of Japanese-Peruvian immigrants and also how they compared to the peoples and the cultures of mainland Japan. Higashide also mentions the prejudice within the Japanese community in Peru between those who immigrated through government agencies and those who came to Latin America as contract laborers. Later, when the author is forcefully deported to the United States he talks about the differences in mindsets between Japan and the U.S. He conveys his life and the lessons he learned through the connections he made which helped him open his own businesses and move up in Peruvian society.
The author created this work to show what immigrants like himself went through after immigrating to the Americas. Throughout the memoir, knowledge can be extracted about how the Japanese-Peruvian communities were structured, how word got around, and how connections were everything in a time before the internet and instant messages.
4.5 Stars
The memoir begins by relating the background history of his family before he was born. Higashide was born in 1909 in Hokkaido. He recounts his early life in Japan where he worked on his father’s farm. The author grew up poor. Because he valued education so highly, he worked very hard to put himself through night school after graduating middle school. This memoir follows Higashide from his home country of Japan, to Peru, and then his forced deportation to the United States.
Higashide retells the hardships he endured just to attend night school in Japan, to obtain the correct paperwork to immigrate to Peru, and immigrate to a country where he was not proficient in the language. The author always worked hard whether that be on his father’s farm in Japan, when he started his own retail business in Peru, or transitioning to life in the United States after WWII where he taught himself to speak a third language. Higashide highlights the differences in generations of Japanese-Peruvian immigrants and also how they compared to the peoples and the cultures of mainland Japan. Higashide also mentions the prejudice within the Japanese community in Peru between those who immigrated through government agencies and those who came to Latin America as contract laborers. Later, when the author is forcefully deported to the United States he talks about the differences in mindsets between Japan and the U.S. He conveys his life and the lessons he learned through the connections he made which helped him open his own businesses and move up in Peruvian society.
The author created this work to show what immigrants like himself went through after immigrating to the Americas. Throughout the memoir, knowledge can be extracted about how the Japanese-Peruvian communities were structured, how word got around, and how connections were everything in a time before the internet and instant messages.
4.5 Stars
January 24, 2016
The author was born in Hokkaido and lived in poverty. The book, being memoirs, goes into a lot of details of his early life in Japan. He decided to move to Peru when he grew up, largely because it had the second largest number of Japanese immigrants (second to the U.S.). Life in Peru didn't turn out to be quite as pleasant as he hoped, though, and the book goes on to describe his difficulties getting started in that foreign country.
He describes a revolution in Peru in 1919 and how Japanese shops ended up being looted by mobs. Seiichi, the author, almost got sent back to Japan by the Japanese consulate in Peru for evading the military draft, but the guy changed his mind and let Seiichi remain in Peru.
The book describes his life as he grew older and got better jobs and ended up getting married. He ended up the owner of shop and became president of the Ica Japanese Association, not a position he wanted or campaigned for. By 1939 there were rumors of a Japanese "fifth column" in the country. Some of the rumors and anti-Japanese feeling were due to the U.S. situation with its Issei and Nisei citizens, and some was due to jealousy over the economic success of Japanese immigrants, exactly the same type of thing that was happening in the U.S. in California in relation to farmers.
A major situation erupted over, of all things, the number of barber shops in the area, leading to what was basically a feud. During this a raid on one person's house by the other faction resulted in the death of a Peruvian woman. She was related to the owner of a tabloid newspaper, and that was all it took to start anti-Japanese articles and eventually riots.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor anti-Japanese articles began to appear in newspapers containing lists of "dangerous axis nationals", lists on which Seiichi's name was added. Further, the lists apparently were provided by a U.S. agency. On January 24, 1942, the Peruvian government broke relations with Japan and began to deport some of the Japanese in the country.
The Peruvian government cracked down on Japanese businesses and ordered them to close. The book continues to talk about oppression of the Japanese by the Peruvian government, how some of the Japanese were deported, etc. Once deportations to Japan stopped the people were deported to the U.S. internment camps. Seiichi does, eventually, get arrested and gets sent to a U.S. military camp in Panama.
Eventually he was sent to a small camp in Texas. He goes into how he was reunited with his wife, people who believed that Japan was actually winning the war, the end of the war and how most of his relatives returned to Japan but he chose to stay in the U.S.
He says 2,118 Japanese were deported to the U.S. from 12 countries in Central and South America. 1,024 were actually arrested, the others were family members who voluntarily joined them.
Seiichi and his wife moved to New Jersey where they found out that working for an American food processing company was not as pleasant as it might have seemed it would be, to put it mildly. There's also some interesting comments by the author on differences in American and Japanese cultures as far as how business is done.
Seiichi and his family later moved to Chicago where they had a rough time of things economically. He also talks about Issei and Nisei cultural> differences.
He and his wife eventually retired to Hawaii. Some of their children later moved there but had problems of their own relating to how Hawaiian-Japanese-Americans perceived mainland-Japanese-Americans. A "kotonk" was a mainlander, and a "Buddhahead" was a Hawaiian Japanese-American. He talks about how this was a problem even during the war for Japanese-American volunteers for the military (and something I saw discussed in a PBS movie about internment.)
The book is quite interesting in its autobiographical approach to being a Japanese immigrant into Peru, only to be forcibly relocated to the U.S. as part of the internment camp program. It's good that he talks about his life after the camps and various problems and successes that he and his wife had. His comments on the culture of U.S. business, the Hawaiian culture and the clash of cultures even within the Japanese-American community are also quite interesting.
He describes a revolution in Peru in 1919 and how Japanese shops ended up being looted by mobs. Seiichi, the author, almost got sent back to Japan by the Japanese consulate in Peru for evading the military draft, but the guy changed his mind and let Seiichi remain in Peru.
The book describes his life as he grew older and got better jobs and ended up getting married. He ended up the owner of shop and became president of the Ica Japanese Association, not a position he wanted or campaigned for. By 1939 there were rumors of a Japanese "fifth column" in the country. Some of the rumors and anti-Japanese feeling were due to the U.S. situation with its Issei and Nisei citizens, and some was due to jealousy over the economic success of Japanese immigrants, exactly the same type of thing that was happening in the U.S. in California in relation to farmers.
A major situation erupted over, of all things, the number of barber shops in the area, leading to what was basically a feud. During this a raid on one person's house by the other faction resulted in the death of a Peruvian woman. She was related to the owner of a tabloid newspaper, and that was all it took to start anti-Japanese articles and eventually riots.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor anti-Japanese articles began to appear in newspapers containing lists of "dangerous axis nationals", lists on which Seiichi's name was added. Further, the lists apparently were provided by a U.S. agency. On January 24, 1942, the Peruvian government broke relations with Japan and began to deport some of the Japanese in the country.
The Peruvian government cracked down on Japanese businesses and ordered them to close. The book continues to talk about oppression of the Japanese by the Peruvian government, how some of the Japanese were deported, etc. Once deportations to Japan stopped the people were deported to the U.S. internment camps. Seiichi does, eventually, get arrested and gets sent to a U.S. military camp in Panama.
Eventually he was sent to a small camp in Texas. He goes into how he was reunited with his wife, people who believed that Japan was actually winning the war, the end of the war and how most of his relatives returned to Japan but he chose to stay in the U.S.
He says 2,118 Japanese were deported to the U.S. from 12 countries in Central and South America. 1,024 were actually arrested, the others were family members who voluntarily joined them.
Seiichi and his wife moved to New Jersey where they found out that working for an American food processing company was not as pleasant as it might have seemed it would be, to put it mildly. There's also some interesting comments by the author on differences in American and Japanese cultures as far as how business is done.
Seiichi and his family later moved to Chicago where they had a rough time of things economically. He also talks about Issei and Nisei cultural> differences.
He and his wife eventually retired to Hawaii. Some of their children later moved there but had problems of their own relating to how Hawaiian-Japanese-Americans perceived mainland-Japanese-Americans. A "kotonk" was a mainlander, and a "Buddhahead" was a Hawaiian Japanese-American. He talks about how this was a problem even during the war for Japanese-American volunteers for the military (and something I saw discussed in a PBS movie about internment.)
The book is quite interesting in its autobiographical approach to being a Japanese immigrant into Peru, only to be forcibly relocated to the U.S. as part of the internment camp program. It's good that he talks about his life after the camps and various problems and successes that he and his wife had. His comments on the culture of U.S. business, the Hawaiian culture and the clash of cultures even within the Japanese-American community are also quite interesting.
August 6, 2014
Most Americans do not know the shameful story behind this story: During WWII, the U.S. forced its Latin American allies to detain all persons of Japanese descent living in their countries, regardless of their citizenship, and send them to the U.S. for internment. Families, homes, and businesses were destroyed.
February 7, 2022
I enjoyed this book. It felt very jumbled in the begging most likely because she put a bunch of excerpts together that her grandfather had written. I do think that it gives a lot of insight into internment camps in the United States. With that said I think this memoir in trying to get people to redress for the internment camps maybe should have added some more of the personal experiences in the actual internment camp. It focused more so in the details I feel like. Over all though this was a very good read!
August 1, 2019
For me, this is not the most engaging writing to be found on the internment history, but it is unusual in representing the Japanese-Latin American experience that is otherwise not very well documented.
January 14, 2022
An amazing life and journey!
May 9, 2009
Written by a friend of a friend - it's just like the title says, a memoir of a Japanese-Peruvian. It describes what life was like being an immigrant in Peru, and the early days of what in retrospect you could call the Japanese diaspora.
The Japanese who emigrated to Peru were put in camps, just like the Japanese-Americans. Bummer. How exactly did this happen? Read the book to find out.
The Japanese who emigrated to Peru were put in camps, just like the Japanese-Americans. Bummer. How exactly did this happen? Read the book to find out.
February 6, 2009
A great autobiography of one mans journey from Japan to South America to an internment camp in the US. This is full of history tha you can't get in a textbook. You might have know about the iternment camps for the Japanese during WWII, but did you know we arrested Japanese citizens in central and South America and interned them?
April 11, 2007
SO INTERESTING!
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews