The Eagles of Heart Mountain: A True Story of Football, Incarceration, and Resistance in World War II America

by Bradford Pearson

The impeccably researched, deeply moving, never-before-told tale about a World War II concentration camp in Wyoming and its extraordinary high school football team—for fans of The Boys in the Boat and The Storm on Our Shores.

In the summer of 1942, the United States government forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes in California, Oregon, Washington, and Arizona, and sent them to internment camps across the West. Nearly 14,000 of them landed on the outskirts of Cody, Wyoming, at the base of Heart Mountain.

Behind barbed wire fences, they faced racism, cruelty, and frozen winters. Trying to recreate comforts from home, they built Buddhist temples and sumo wrestling pits. They grew Chinese cabbage and daikon radishes—yet there was little hope.

That is, until the fall of 1943, when the camp’s high school football team, the Eagles, started its first season and finished it undefeated, crushing the competition from nearby predominantly white high schools. Amid all this excitement, American politics continued to disrupt their lives as the federal government drafted men from the camps for the front lines—including some of the Eagles. The young men faced a choice to either join the Army or resist the draft. Teammates were divided, and some were jailed for their decisions.

Set during a complex political and cultural moment in America, The Eagles of Heart Mountain honors the resilience of unlikely heroes and the power of sports in a sweeping and inspirational portrait of one of the darkest moments in American history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Sports, World War II, Book Club, War, American History

400 pages, Hardcover

First published January 5, 2021

Reviews

[Olive Fellows (abookolive) · Rating 4 out of 5]

My review is in the Christian Science Monitor.

[Claire Reads Books · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️ Although this is presented as a story about a football team, it is, in actuality, just a really solid introduction to the history of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II. The actual football makes up maybe...15% of the book? But it helps to ground the broader history in human characters and human stories, and the entire book is chock-full of the kind of historical details, anecdotes, and ephemera that make you feel like you're paging through an old yearbook or sifting through a box of faded photos. That said, sometimes Pearson burrows too deeply into details that are fascinating but tangentially relevant at best, in a way that bogs the rest of the book down. I wish this book had had a little more of an arc and structure to it, but for anyone interested in learning more about this period of history, it’s a good place to start.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Normally, I have to include one disclaimer, but this time I have to include two. Firstly, I received this book as part of a Goodreads Giveaway. Secondly, while not the son of an incarceree, I am the son of an immigrant from Japan. I therefore have some bias about the content of this book. As far as I have studied about this subject, Bradford Pearson has done an excellent job brushing away hearsay to find hard facts. The small scale history of sports in the Heart Mountain camp is wonderfully connected to the large scale history of World War II and Japanese-American Incarceration. There are some who would have us only learn the history we are comfortable with. That every action in the past had only the result of American prosperity and no side effects on the most vulnerable. This book does not shy away from the uncomfortable truths. Pearson does this in a matter-of-fact writing style that is also extremely accessible and enjoyable. I think everyone should read this book and historians should look at it as an example of what history books could best look like.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was perhaps not the optimum time to be reading this book. I expected a book of triumph over adversity in the same order as Brown’s The Boys in The Boat. Not much of a football afficionado, I had planned to skim the book to vet it as a gift for a Japanese-American friend who lives near Heart Mountain.

Upon cracking the cover, instead of a narrative about resilient athletes, I got sucked into a detailed portrait of white privilege—an in-depth history lesson about blatant Caucasian American hubris, racism, ignorance, and rumor-mongering that stained some of this country’s political figures and heroes of the past: Warren Delano Sr, the great grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Franklin Roosevelt himself; General John DeWitt; Karl Bendetson, progeny of Lithuanian Jews; California attorney general Earl Warren, destined to become chief justice of the Supreme Court; among a long list of other players on the field of hatred and abuse.

To read this book during a month in which an armed insurrection lead by a morally bankrupt American President, bolstered by an unending cadre of crooked, short-sighted, racist, sexist, politicians and deal makers tested my emotional state.

The first half of the book delves deeply into the hows, whys, and wheres of America’s incarceration of Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese ancestry. I had always assumed that this debacle was a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. But Pearl Harbor was just the final straw in a lengthy effort to disenfranchise Japanese Americans. About halfway through the book, Pearson begins fleshing out the lives and personalities of young Japanese athletes—the group of young men from up and down the west coast, who came together during the frigid winter of Heart Mountain Concentration Camp to participate in sports. In this section Pearson probes the high school football intrigues of small western towns and the extraordinary obstacles a rag tag team of incarcerated, Japanese-American young men overcome to excel at a game most of them had never played before.

The last quarter of the book explores the football narrative in detail. There are many characters and a lot of football jargon that was lost on me. My attention flagged in this part, but that is due to my lack of passion for sports. It was also during this section that I had the most difficulty tracking a timeline that transitions backwards and forwards between the years of 1941–45. This was a result of the author describing the life trajectory of each of the young football players as they are featured in the narrative.

For me, what stands out most in this story, is the ugly racism and hypocrisy of a “government imprisoning 120,000 Japanese Americans only to ask them a year later to pick up a gun and die for the same government.” In opposition to her husband and anti-Japanese sentiment, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote a telling truth about why Japanese Americans were treated like dogs. “This happened because, in one part of our country (the west coast), they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in: that of equal rights for all human beings.”

I simply can’t get past how relevant that statement is to what is happening in America 80 years later.

[Abby P. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to push through this book. There’s a lot of historical info regarding the relocation and incarceration of thousands of Japanese during WWII. That info is definitely worth reading and learning about. However, the writing in this particular book is often sporadic and goes off on tangents. And the football team that is pictured on the cover? That is a very small percentage of the book. Chapter 13 finally starts to discuss it. Even though I was reading important history, I kept feeling like I was waiting for the book to begin. There are other, better organized books that discuss the Japanese incarceration.

[John Yingling · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even with having knowledge of this part of American history, I was deeply saddened and angry reading about the terrible ordeal of Japanese-Americans after the events of December 7, 1941. To have your life uprooted completely and to be treated as enemies from the country you either grew up in or has become your home after many years is appalling. The author does a good job of showing the strength and resilience of these Americans as they are taken from their home and put in, essentially, concentration camps, deprived of all their rights as citizens. The stories of the football team at Heart Mountain, Wyoming is an excellent example of how Japanese-Americans stood up to this outrage and showed how productive and loyal citizens they always were. And many of them showed even more how loyal they were to their country by joining the military, fighting courageously and dying to prove their worth as Americans. This is a good history of this shameful era and also a very interesting story of how sports can bring together a community.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're thinking of reading this book about football you may be disappointed. A Japanese-American football team merely provides the backdrop for one of our country's biggest injustices, the incarceration and relocation of American citizens because they were of Japanese descent during World War II. The author meticulously writes a story of racial and cultural discrimination and the fear of people who look different. The history of Japanese incarceration is a stain on our nation, but one many are unfamiliar with. This history is especially important in the current history we are apart of. I firmly believe history repeats itself. The parallel between what we did to Japanese-Americans then is too frighteningly parallel to the attitude toward some American's today. This is another dark period in our American History which seems to repeat itself over and over throughout our history. I will stop editorializing, read the book it will do you some good to know about another dark period in American History and how you can make this world a better place to live in.

[Louis · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would have been so much better had it not made a promise it could not keep. When I picked up this book, I expected something along the lines of The Boys In the Boat, a story of lives upended by international intrigue that find meaning in sports. Supposedly the tale of a wildly successful high school football team made up of World War II Japanese American internees in the camp at Heart Mountain, Wyoming, the gridiron makes up a decidedly small part of the story. This book instead focuses on the lives of those interned there. Lacking the tale promised on the cover, the book fails to make up for it with sufficient detail about the lives of the internees. There's not enough of this compelling backstory, leaving the reader with a disjointed narrative lacking in drama. Too bad; it could have been something special. Three and a half stars.

[Niklas Braun · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great history not just of specific sports teams during the concentration of Japanese Americans, but just an all around great history of this shit time in American history. I love this book and I think everyone should read it.

[Joe Keefhaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here is some dark history of the United States that certainly should not be erased. It is the story of the incarceration of Japanese-Americans and their Japan-born parents and the virulent racism aimed at them during World War II. Even today, I see posts on Facebook saying Roosevelt was justified to imprison these people because of what the Japanese did at Pearl Harbor. Some of us are seemingly still unable to differentiate between the government of Japan, which mounted the attack, and American citizens of Japanese ancestry who were imprisoned though charged with no crime. The backdrop of the story is the athletic achievements of the Japanese-Americans during this time, but the accounts of long-ago football games were of limited interest to me. That being said, this is an excellent explanation of the hardships endured by these Americans before, during and after the war. There was absolutely no justification for what happened. This book, or books like it, should be required reading in our schools.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an interesting facet of history, how America treated it's Japanese citizens during World War 2. This book does a great job explaining the struggle the people went through. The only problem is Eagles of Heart Mountain doesn't really talk about football like the subtitle suggests. There's only a few chapters near the end about the football team, while the rest focusing on the circumstances leading up to said football team.

[Janilyn Kocher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pearson wrote a compelling read about a group of Japanese Americans who played on a football team during WWII. He covers the history of how things came to be quite well. The backstories of the individuals are also provided, adding depth and context. He also relates what happened after the war. I think this book is a valuable contribution to the more specific history of Japanese-American treatment during the Second World War. I learned quite a bit from reading it. Thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advance read.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an important aspect of history that went overlook at least in my early aughts public education. Not only did it serve as a primer, but spoken through the lens of football and the young men and their families presented a very human picture.

[Buddy Draper · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve heard many times about the horrible way Japanese Americans were treated during WW2. I never heard much about the concentration camps they lived in, but the stories I heard painted the Japanese Americans as being passive. This book tells the story of a group of people from the Los Angeles area, their back stories, their deportation to and time at Heart Mountain in Wyoming, and the way they distracted themselves with sports and work to help them get through their horrible experiences. This book was interesting and very sad.

[Melissa Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of great historical facts in this book. It sometimes read like a straight up history textbook and I guess I was hoping for a little bit more of a continuous story. There were some great stories within this book. I certainly learned a lot about the Japanese experience in America during WWII. I just thought it jumped around a lot between football, other sports, different people/families’ experiences, and war information.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up this book because my dad spent his high school years in the Heart Mountain camp and did play football (fullback) during those years. Pearson does a good job establishing the historical context for the wartime relocations, but the book doesn't have a smooth flow or cohesion that integrates the (true life) characters with the greater timeline that drives the narrative. They just seem along for the ride, and it isn't until the back half of the book that the football games are described--in almost too much detail relative to the build up. The book does provide a good sense of camp life and the surrounding environs of Wyoming, but largely through pop-up experiential anecdotes. Aside from the main personalities, others figures come and go with shallow description (example: when a prominent coach and assistant both leave the football club, it is mentioned as happening but with no explanation as to why). That all being said, I'm glad this book was written and (from what I know) it does accurately capture the conflicted attitudes of the internees. My dad, James Ichikawa, served in the US Army (MIS), spared from action in the invasion of Japan due to the A-bomb. But he never had anything good to say about FDR, and less about DeWitt. Anyone who reads this book would understand why.

[Fay Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book reads like a film-I hope one day it is a film!-and stays with you long after you finish reading. Bradford Pearson is a masterful storyteller and manages floor weave dense, important historical information with powerful stories of real families and young men. This is an important story that has needed to be told for decades, and Mr. Pearson’s writing tells it in a way that captures the reader’s attention and leaves a strong impression. Just wish I was in a book club to discuss-it left me with so many thoughts!

[Victoria Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

"DO YOU KNOW what your people did?”
George Yoshinaga spent the Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, the same way he spent most Sunday mornings: with 10 cents in his pocket and his feet trained to Knight’s Pharmacy.

Those are the opening sentences and with those, Pearson had me hooked.

I know nothing about football, but fear not! Pearson uses football to dive into not only the shameful chapter of Japanese incarceration during WW2, but also the political machinations that led to the stripping of Japanese-Americans of their rights in the years leading up to Pearl harbor as well as daily life and indignities in the camp.

Pearson also includes instances of resistance among those in the camp. My favorite is the 400-strong (successful) protest by new mothers.

[Lorraine Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

When reading this book I kept thinking "why didn't we learn this in school." Deeply understanding this history if Japanese internment could have helped to prevent a Muslim ban, Mexican children in cages at the border, and other racially-enacted fear-based crimes.

Pearson wrote a novel that was well researched, thoroughly documented, and moving. I hope we all learn from this chapter of history as to not repeat it again.

[Trey Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I won this book as part of a Goodreads giveaway. While there are not spoilers since this is a historical event, I will provide some details, but not too much so readers can enjoy the book. I think anyone interested in WWII history will enjoy the book and if you enjoy early US Sports history, you will find aspects of the book interesting, but it is worth the read and I would highly recommend reading it.

This book has two aspects that interested me, history of WWII and sports history. This book examines decisions of the US government, including anti-Japanese sentiment, starting in the 1880s, until the close of WWII. This book serves as an outline of how racism and misconceptions lead to an often overlooked dark moment in US history. The internment and relocation of Japanese Americans was not something random, as the author explains the building rage by communities in California and in the western US.

Using different families and explaining their history and experiences in America, the author shows how devastating this was to them. While he did not compare it to the Holocaust directly, there were parallels drawn, including the removal from homes, loss of property, and mistreatment in camps. While interned Japanese were paid for labor and were not experimented on, their forced relocation was fueled by some of the same logic Hitler used in Germany. This is something that American history books shy away from, but the author accurately and fairly covers the individual narratives, while sharing the larger picture of Executive order 9906.

As for the underlying theme of sports, they were prevalent, and it was featured in the 2nd half of the book, showing how the Japanese Americans proved they are as athletic and equal as their American counterparts. The material was not as strong to me as the rest of the book. The narration of the games and the athletes featured was interesting and definitely worthy of including in the book. I wish he could have delved deeper into how the surrounding areas perceived traveling to the internment camp. While the story is about the Japanese Americans and not the town in Wyoming, how coaches got high school teams to come to the camp to play would make the section stronger.

The book is worth a read and while I did not examine all source material, he appears to have used family interviews and firsthand information to tell the stories of these Japanese Americans and show how they felt and were impacted.

[Jenni · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book from a New Books display at my library and I'm so glad I did. It is doubtful I would've ever read it otherwise. It is equal parts WWII-era American and sports history, and I give it a definite 5 stars for the content. I learned so much about this shameful part of American history of which I was previously unaware, as well as a part of football sports history that was also unknown to me.

This book covers the making of [mostly high school] football sports history by many Japanese-Americans, as well as the time they and their families spent incarcerated in first temporary and then more permanent detention camps (NOTE: some Japanese Americans interviewed by the author prefer the term concentration camps while others choose to refer to them as relocation centers), where they were incarcerated for the "crime" of their ancestry, despite many of them having been born in the US, never having even visited Japan, much less ever having lived there, and speaking &/or reading & writing Japanese. These families were uprooted from their formerly productive lives up and down the West coast of the US, and detained for the remainder of the war after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

If you education was similar to mine, then you probably heard about the internment of Japanese Americans as nothing more than a minor mention in your history classes. While I was certainly aware that such camps had existed, I was taught nothing about the Fair Play Committee and its activities nor the legal proceedings associated with it, the disagreement between Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR about the treatment of Japanese-American citizens during this time, nor many other aspects of how the "relocation" of these citizens was handled. I hope that current curriculum covers this portion of our history with a more in-depth exploration than mine did.

The amount of detail in which the author is able to write about specific details of high school football games that took place from 1943 - 1945 is an amazing tribute to the archivists who preserved the local newspaper articles where this information must have originally appeared and it is a fitting tribute to the young men who made Wyoming high school football history, despite the bigotry they encountered while doing so.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about this period of American history.

[Jessica Senn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I looked forward to this book coming out. As soon as it crossed my radar, a countdown started to publication day. I was one of the very first to get it from my library. Unfortunately it was a little bit of a let down. (probably closer to a 3 1/2 star than a 4) Don't get me wrong, it was a VERY well researched book, but it falls prey to the old "title describes a completely different book than you actually read" dilemma.
First off, I'm 100% for a developed history/backstory. Unfortunately, the author took it a little too far in this book in my opinion. You are well past the 100 page mark (a third of the way into this book since notes begin on page 304) before you get any significant mention of football or the "main characters" of the title. Sure, two of them are mentioned at the very opening, but combined it amounts to maybe 3 or 4 pages.
Second, I came away knowing FAR more about the movers and shakers behind the decision for incarceration than I did about the actual Eagles themselves. I didn't need to know the details about their lives and their ancestor's lives, I get it, they are really bad people and super racists of the worst kind.
Third, there were several instances where someone was mentioned and I found myself asking "should I care about this person? have they been introduced?" Where some people got a FULL introduction and family tree and history, others just appeared in a fragment of a sentence and then were referred to throughout the remainder of the book like we should have known them the whole time.
All in all, it was a fascinating book, I just felt like the title was misleading. Football, and indeed the incarcerees took a back seat to politics. This is the authors first book, so I see good things ahead and will definitely add him to the list of authors to keep an eye on.

[Thomas Kelley · Rating 4 out of 5]

First thing you need to know about this book is it is a well written story about a terrible time in American history and the horrible treatment of a group of people. Also I would say that about 25% of this book is actually about football and the rest is concerning the initial treatment of Asian people and everything leading up to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the internment of Japanese people. The rumors spread about these people was pure insanity at the time and the demands that some were throwing out like if they really wanted to prove their loyalty to the U.S. they should volunteer to go to the internment camps. Now mind you some of these were born here and some had proved their loyalty by serving for the U.S. in world war I.

It is my opinion that humanity repeats history over and over the only thing that changes is the class or origin or skin color of the people affected. The hysteria created by politicians and public figures. It is the same fears stoked each time these individuals are going to take our jobs and land and are going to over run us. These people that were raising these claims alot of them were immigrants also or their families were. You would think they would be a more understanding. The Japanese made up less then 1 % and controlled a minimal amount of the farm land in the western united states and yet the fear was they were not loyal even though they expressed full support for the United States. Then they get penalized for getting pushed to poor farm land and making a success of it and for having a strong work ethic.

Now the majority of this story is around the internment camp located in Wyoming but it was interesting to read about some of the locations I have lived including here in Colorado were a camp is located two hours to the east right along the Colorado/Kansas border. This story should provoke your emotions.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I would have liked this book more had it been organized a bit better. The continuity was there, but it kept fading in and out as the personal stories were dropped for scores of pages as historical and political events were recounted. I couldn't figure out whether to get invested in the lives of a couple of the Japanese American kids, or if they were just an aside as the focus shifted from the personal to more political and historical content. It felt like the author was bouncing from one manila file folder of facts to another and back again, and not very deftly at that.

Not being a football fan, I could have cared less about the play-by-play descriptions of the high school football games; I would have been more interested in more of a a focus on the families of the boys. But I also understand that sports is a hook that gets a reading audience interested in the history surrounding these particular sporting events. And I understand that in this respect, I'm most likely in the minority.

I missed completely the author's intent (as described in an interview) for the reader to appreciate the similarity of the challenges facing the football players and the legal challenges facing the draft resisters as described in the last 1/3 of the book. I appreciated each groups' challenge, but did not see them as similar, since the consequences facing the draft resisters were of such greater magnitude those of the football players. The football challenges seemed almost trivial in comparison. I wanted to hear more about the draft resisters.

Had this book been more cohesive, it would have been a real winner. As it was, it was still a good read, but I had to make an effort sometimes to stay engaged as I worked to keep the threads of the story sorted. The fact that the book raised my awareness of this shameful situation in American history made me give it 4 stars.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you're coming to this book just for the football, you may be disappointed. While football, and sports in general, provides the backbone of this book, the book is really a thorough history of the treatment of Japanese Americans in general and, in particular, their treatment and internment in the years following Pearl Harbor.

While I found the football through line interesting, and it works as a way to provide a window into the central figures' lives before, during, and after this time period, I probably would have been just as happy with another entrée into the personal and social lives of the camps (but I'll leave that to other books). Instead what gripped me the most about this book was the detailed accounting of the people in the camps, and the people choosing to put them there.

My only gripe is that the narrative was constantly jumping around in place and time. I think there are ways in which that format is engaging, but here I found it often disorienting. Nevertheless, including various timelines allowed the author to go into details of every central figure's history (and sometimes family history), present (in the WWII present), and future after the war, along with the history of Japanese immigration to America. This then gives readers the larger picture (internment, racism, war) alongside individual human stories.

(Thank you Atria Books and GoodReads for the advance copy.)

[Thomas George Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a non fiction account about innocent Japanese-Americans incarcerated throughout the Midwest during World War Two. During the incarceration the teenage boys in this particular camp in Heart Mountain Wyoming, started up a football team to help pass the time. It is the story of these survivors from this camp. I found this account quite heart rendering. It also made me angry about the United States government forcing these innocent Americans into what I would call "Concentration Camps." The greatest irony, however, was that the SCOTUS supported the Roosevelt Administration's edict in said incarceration. And to add insult to injury this same government, that in 1942 decreed that these Japanese-Americans were not even considered Americans, drafted the young men in 1943 to fight the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese overseas. Most refuse the draft and were subsequently sent to prison. The irony of ironies. During said incarceration an anonymous Japanese- American penned a poem "That Damned Fence." In one of the last stanzas it reads: 'Loyalty we know and patriotism we feel, To sacrifice our utmost was our ideal, To fight for our country and die, perhaps; But we're here because we happen to be Japs." Another irony of ironies is War Secretary Henry Stimson's comment about the incarcerated Japanese-American young men who refused the draft; "It is inherent of every faithful citizen, regardless of ancestry, to bear arms in that nation's fight." Go figure. A must read who anyone who loves history the way it actually happened, and not the water downed account.

[Holly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A poignant retelling of the history of World War II’s incarceration of Japanese Americans and the legacies to behold from that era—namely, the brotherhood and camaraderie that could be found in the camps. Pearson draws vivid depictions of Japanese American men (teens and young adults) who experienced dramatic uprooting of their lives but who also found ways to live their displaced lives fully. As I read Pearson’s words, I could readily imagine the friendships that were born in these camps, based not only in circumstance but in a shared love for sports. This book is an intimate look into the personal lives of a few Japanese American men, while also explaining the broader history of Japanese American incarceration from World War II.

As someone who has done research into this time period—on developing detailed portraits of Japanese Americans that relocated from camps to universities in order to further their education—I appreciated Pearson’s method of storytelling. His book isn’t just telling us who was who and what happened but tells us about these men in such a way that allows us to feel emotional toward their experiences, to understand the intricacies of their relationships with one another, and to root for them and their later outcomes.

Absolutely loved this book and the history that was shared. Now a favorite on my bookshelf.

[marcus miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pearson does a wonderful job of telling part of the story of the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, including the creative ways many of the prisoners found to keep themselves somewhat sane. While some might find the focus on sports to be the most interesting, the beneficial part of the book is where Pearson documents the anti-Asian sentiments of many Americans in the years leading up to WWII. Pearson describes the obstacles most Japanese immigrants faced, the constant harrassment from white farmers and white owned businesses to limit competition from Japanese-Americans. Particularly troubling were those polititians looking to score easy points by demonizing Japanese Americans, and other polititians, such as FDR and Earl Warren, who either went along with the racist diatribes or who contributed to them when it was convenient to their cause. The only goverenment official who comes off in a slightly positive way is Milton Eisenhower, younger brother of Dwight Eisenhower.
In this time, where some state legislatures are passing laws trying to limit the teaching of subjects about racism, this is an important and timely book covering a time when the United States government, many state governments and individuals were more than eager to throw the concept of constitutional rights and personal liberties in the trash, all because of racism and irrational fears.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Getting back into my non-fic groove! It’s a really great jounralisty researched account of a football team of young men during the forced internment of Japanese Americans by the US government in the early 40s, in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. I found the most compelling parts were the explorations of how organized resistance within the camp formed — between mothers, demanding the right to feed their babies warm milk, and between young men, resisting the federal draft that sought to fill waning WWII military ranks with incarcerated men while also denying them the full rights of their citizenship and personhood. I learned a ton about the political and cultural forces that shaped how white supremacy and nationalism manifested during WWII, and this was a well-written & moving history that I think did justice to its interviewees and subjects.

[Kirk Astroth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the Tulsa massacre in 1921, the full story of the injustice of the Japanese internment during WW II has not reached the popular press until this book. A great retelling of deceit, racism, inequality and betrayal of American citizens because of their ethnicity. Sad to read the details of their sudden removal and the racists in charge who coveted their land, stores and homes. And an American President who sanctioned it all, even though unconstitutional. And yet out of this some great stories of Japanese prowess in sports—again a story that has not been told. Excellent work, Bradford Pearson. Thank you for writing this book and keeping the facts alive.