Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps

by Michi Weglyn, James A. Michener (Introduction)

"In 1942 110,000 West Coast residents, many of them United States citizens, were placed in concentration camps for no reason other than that they were of Japanese origin. One of them, Michi Weglyn, a teenager at the time, recounts their experience, drawing on Government documents and on her own memories of one of the camps. An appalling story of neglect and even brutality."―New York Times Book Review"Weglyn writes with a compelling mixture of passion, thorough research, and a fierce tough-mindedness. Her book should be of immense value to anyone interested in minority experience, World War II, or the squirmings of public policy under pressure."―James D. Houston, Harper's Bookletter"Certainly the most thoroughly documented account of World War II Japanese American internment. . . . Formidable."―Kirkus Reviews

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War II, Race, Asian American, Japan, Military Fiction

Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Michi Nishiura Weglyn (November 29, 1926 – April 25, 1999) was an American author.

Reviews

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book about the internment of the Japanese in United States during WWII because I was very interested in the phenomenon based on my readings about the Canadian Japanese were also interned during WWII. I had hoped that my understanding of what had happened in my country would be greatly enhanced if would be able to compare it to what had happened in the U.S. Ms. Weglyn's book proved to be everything that I had hoped it would be and more.

Their internment in the US was significantly shorter than it was Canada because the US entered WWII in January 1942 whereas Canada was involved at war as of September 1939. The Canadian government confiscated all the vehicles (cars, fishing boats, trucks), businesses, homes and real estate belonging to the Japanese. The US did not confiscate any property. However, internees typically lost their real estate because of their inability to pay municipal property taxes while interned. Canadian internees were not allowed to serve in the Canadian armed forces during the war. American Internees of military age were required to serve.

Internment in both countries was quite civilized. The internees were given small cabins in which they could live as families. Health services and education were also provided for. The internees were allowed to leave the camps to earn money as labourers.

Miss Weglyn has written a first rate book that provides tremendous insight on the Japanese internment in the United Sates.

This book is well researched and relatively dispassionate. While it does make it clear that the internment was motivated by racism, it also makes it clear that large segments of the white population were appalled by what happened and worked vigorously afterwards to ensure that the internees were compensated for their internment.

[Molly Koeneman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reminds you how calculated prejudice is in american law.

[José · Rating 5 out of 5]

Time, mercifully, has a way of spreading a softening patina over the most painful of life's slights and wounds. This, coupled with the all too often obscured fact that the overwhelming number of guiltless victims swept into America's concentration camps were mere minors may account today for what has been observed as a striking absence of bitterness, for the seeming inability of ex-evacuees to nurse old hatreds-"some of whom," notes a recent Newsweek article, "like to invite the American commandants of their wartime camps to give speeches at Nisei reunions." It is unusual to find a former evacuee who has not forgiven the human weakness of his fellow white Americans

Wow. Chilling and blood-boiling at the same time.

I was completely ignorant of the part Latin American countries played in also shipping their own brothers and sisters to American concentration camps, and the wanton enthusiasm with which it had been done. I didn’t expect to see documents from Imperial Japan denouncing Bolivian ‘removals’ in the appendix


In the Latin American case it was specially poignant that the US , against all common sense, deported some of these internee ‘aliens’ to Japan of all places, and not to their homelands; or else used them in POW exchanges. Although admittedly many of their ‘home’ governments were (for no good reason) flat out opposed to their return in any case

----

Tangentially related and somewhat ironic is that less than a decade after the war the US occupation force still ruling over Okinawan territory began a sizeable emigration program as part of its plan to reconstruct an economically devastated Japan. Some Latin American countries participated in this program, among them Bolivia, which to my understanding owes its gallant and industrious Okinawan-descendant diaspora to this event. Had anti-Japanese hysteria really abated in such a short time? It is curious how cowardly and capricious racism is, most of all when it is weaponized

[James Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michi Nishiura Weglyn, 1996

The book starts out with photos relating to the interment and reproductions of some newspaper articles relating to the Tule Lake riot. (Why books don't include more reproductions like this is a puzzlement to me.)

The introduction should definitely be read and is very hard-hitting. Chapter 1 deals with "The Secret Munson Report." This relates to the Munson report which was ordered by FDR prior to Pearl Harbor and concluded that there was no threat from the Japanese Americans living on the West Coast or in Hawaii that couldn't be handled by the FBI using normal measures. The report was kept secret until 1946, though.

The author points out that of those evacuated, many were infants, extremely young children or extremely old people, none of whom could possibly have posed any threat to the country. One of his interesting statements in relation to the Nisei is that they "show a pathetic eagerness to be Americans." He later adds "There is no Japanese ‘problem' on the Coast. There will be no armed uprising of Japanese. There will undoubtedly be some sabotage financed by Japan and executed largely by imported agents...In each Naval District there are about 250 to 300 suspects under surveillance. It is easy to get on the suspect list, merely a speech in favor of Japan at some banquet being sufficient to land one there. The Intelligence Services are generous with the title of suspect and are taking no chances. Privately, they believe that only 50 to 60 in each district can be classed as really dangerous. The Japanese are hampered as saboteurs because of their easily recognized physical appearances. ...There is far more danger from Communists and people of the Bridges type on the Coast than there is from Japanese. The Japanese here is almost exclusively a farmer, a fisherman or a small businessman. He has no entree to plants or intricate machinery."

Chapter 2 is entitled "Hostages." This chapter discusses the use of people as hostages to try to ensure Japan's good behavior, or as reprisals if Japan did something to its hostages that teed off the U.S. The chapter also discusses the Japanese-Peruvians that ended up in the U.S.

The events leading up to the decision to evacuate the Japanese-Americans is discussed along with FDR's anti-Japanese racism. Chapter 4 then deals with the actual evacuations. The life and problems at the assembly centers is discussed along with the construction of the internment camps. The author also discusses the use of guns and the behavior of the guards.

Next discussed are the work-release programs at the camps, people involved in making the evacuation decision who later regretted their decisions, and trouble in the camps. Also included is some discussion of the role of the JACL in relation to the camp problems.

The complex problem of the loyalty questionnaire is next to be covered, along with the role of Southern politicians in all this. Tule Lake is discussed in chapter 9, starting out with a quote showing just how bad the conditions were and how in some cases they were worse conditions than in federal prisons.

The conversion of Tule Lake into a segregation center is explained along with the international problem that happened when certain "troublemakers" at Tule Lake were given extremely harsh punishment. The end result was the ending of prisoner-exchange negotiations between the two countries.

Then, in an act that utterly confuses me, the author next puts in a variety of appendices.

Except it's not the end of the book, which is where appendices normally go. It's the middle of the book. There are 12 appendices, and then the book moves on to chapter 10.

Whatever.

Chapter 10 starts by noting that the U.S. and Japan both initially agreed to abide by the Geneva Convention. This applied to POW-internees, and only those actually held at the Dept. of Justice camps were considered by the U.S. to fall under that category, so the people in the regular camps did not have to be treated according to the Geneva Conventions. The main argument still centered around the use of the stockade for "troublemakers" at Tule, and Tokyo protested their treatment to the U.S. Family members were not allowed to visit people in the stockade (but in regular prisons they were allowed to) even though the ACLU protested. Discussions between the ACLU and some of those being held are presented. This amidst a rather questionable voting ploy by the camp administration to get those who against the protests into power in the camp.

Directly from the book: "In the improvident mishandling of the Japanese American minority, a singularly powerful weapon had been handed copy writers of Radio Tokyo. The wholesale racial detention of a people based on the mere accident of ancestry substantiated, as nothing else could, japan's claim that the war in the Pacific was a crusade against the white man's arrogance and oppression..."

The next chapter goes over the question of liberating or not liberating some or all of the internees. Discussed also was the movement to block internees from returning to the West Coast, a movement led by the Hearst newspapers.

The repatriation movement is covered next, especially at the Tule center. This is a very fascinating movement and one showing how much pressure one group can put on another to toe the line. It also doesn't make for happy reading of any sort. This is then followed by a discussion of how many of the people who initially renounced their citizenship wanted to change their minds, once the pressure of the more radical faction of the camp was eased.

The epilogue covers what has happened since the time of the closing of the camps.

This is a very, very good book (even if it does put the appendices in the middle) and contains a lot of detailed information on the problems at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, doing this in more detail than perhaps any other source I've yet consulted. Definitely a good book to get.

[Gayle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! Another story of the inhumanity of America towards people of another race. These were concentration camps with guards even though they said they were to protect the Japanese. The government ruined their lives. One-third were citizens of the United States. Their land was taken or stolen, their stores, etc. They had 48 hours to pack up and move to these camps. They split families apart. Lies, racism, cruelty, and government paperwork took 24 years to settle. This is another tragedy!

[Jenna Nishimura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested to learn about WWII beyond the insufficient and one-sided summaries found in textbooks, movies, documentaries, etc.

Michi Weglyn’s research and perspective as a survivor of America’s concentration camps for people of Japanese ancestry are a necessary addition to American history.

[David Haws · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve probably read 30 books on the Nikkei internment of World War II, half of them being library books I’d checked out. Most of the library books were pristine, looking as if they’d never been read. But nearly every page of this one contains emotional, penciled marginalia; and the book obviously struck a responsive chord in its many readers. Others (e.g., Grodzins, Daniels) have contributed scholarly works in a tone of indignation toward the abusive, forced dislocation of west coast Nikkei; but this was, I think, the first substantive work (1976) delivered in a similar tone by a Nisei who suffered personally inside the camps. For the most part, previous Nisei contributions (e.g., Okubo’s Citizen 13360 or Kikuchi’s Tanforan Diary) had been remarkably restrained in avoiding the judgmental.

Much has been made of the Nisei changing attitude toward their internment as a result of America’s Civil Rights Movement—which really lost much of its momentum a decade before this book was written. I think Watergate (Weglyn does mention it once in the book) is a more likely motivation. The west coast Nikkei (at least at the beginning of the internment) had an abiding faith in democracy. They believed (like most Americans) that FDR was their national protector. And they were betrayed by FDR. The cognitive dissonance must have been overwhelming. Many of the Nikkei felt their internment as a source of 恥 (shame). This was an easier resolution of their cognitive dissonance than believing that a president would betray so many of the citizens he had sworn to protect. After Nixon and Watergate, it became easier to see FDR’s betrayal for what it was.

I think Weglyn’s tone would have been very different if she had written the book a decade earlier, or a decade later. And I think the book is as valuable as an indicator of a changing Nikkei attitude, leading to the redress movement, as it is a chronicler of the internment.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though difficult to follow and, at times, downright boring, this book is probably one of the best on Japanese Internment. It delves into several aspects of internment life and the various government acts that dictated the lives of over 110,000 Japanese Americans. I give it four stars, not for entertainment value, but for information.

[kathleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Learned about the forced relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese residing along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. It was quite interesting but at times too descriptive and horrific.

[Milton Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love history and (naievely) thought I was reasonably well informed regarding the Japanese in the United States during World War II. This book did not contradict any of my awareness, but it did provide a much clearer and a much more complete view of the experiences of the Japanese during this time along with insights into the white officials who were overseeing this project.