The Japanese American Community PDF Download

Author: Stephanie D. Hinnershitz
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812299957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government wrongfully imprisoned thousands of Japanese American citizens and profited from their labor. Japanese American Incarceration recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation. Following Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066, which called for the exclusion of potentially dangerous groups from military zones along the West Coast, the federal government placed Japanese Americans in makeshift prisons throughout the country. In addition to working on day-to-day operations of the camps, Japanese Americans were coerced into harvesting crops, digging irrigation ditches, paving roads, and building barracks for little to no compensation and often at the behest of privately run businesses—all in the name of national security. How did the U.S. government use incarceration to address labor demands during World War II, and how did imprisoned Japanese Americans respond to the stripping of not only their civil rights, but their labor rights as well? Using a variety of archives and collected oral histories, Japanese American Incarceration uncovers the startling answers to these questions. Stephanie Hinnershitz's timely study connects the government's exploitation of imprisoned Japanese Americans to the history of prison labor in the United States.

Author: David A. Neiwert
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 1466888938
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Strawberry Days tells the vivid and moving tale of the creation and destruction of a Japanese immigrant community. Before World War II, Bellevue, the now-booming "edge city" on the outskirts of Seattle, was a prosperous farm town renowned for its strawberries. Many of its farmers were recent Japanese immigrants who, despite being rejected by white society, were able to make a living cultivating the rich soil. Yet the lives they created for themselves through years of hard work vanished almost instantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. David Neiwert combines compelling story-telling with first-hand interviews and newly uncovered documents to weave together the history of this community and the racist schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after the war. Ultimately, Strawberry Days represents more than one community's story, reminding us that bigotry's roots are deeply entwined in the very fiber of American society.

Author: Stephen S. Fugita
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801832
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
Why do some groups retain their ethnicity as they become assimilated into mainstream American life while others do not? This study employs both historical sources and contemporary survey data to explain the seeming paradox of why Japanese Americans have maintained high levels of ethnic community involvement while becoming structurally assimilated. Most traditional approaches to the study of ethnicity in the United States are based on the European immigrant experience and conclude that a zero-sum relationship exists between assimilation and retention of ethnicity: community solidarity weakens as structural assimilation grows stronger. Japanese Americans, however, like American Jews, do not fit this pattern. The basic thesis of this book is that the maintenance of ethnic community solidarity, the process of assimilation, and the reactions of an ethnic group to outside forces must be understood in light of the internal social organization of the ethnic group, which can be traced to core cultural orientations that predate immigration. Though frequently excluded from mainstream economic opportunities, Japanese Americans were able to form quasi-kin relationships of trust, upon which enduring group economic relations could be based. The resultant ethnic economy and petit bourgeois family experience fostered the values of hard work, deferred gratification, and other perspectives conductive to success in mainstream society. This book will be of interest to sociologist and psychologist studying ethnicity, community organization, and intergenerational change; and to anyone interested in the Japanese American experience from an economic or political perspective, Asian American studies, or social history of the United States.

Author: Gene N. Levine
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Author: Stephen Fugita
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 9780295983806
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The first major empirical study of the long-term effects of the incarceration of Japanese Americans in World War II

Author: Daniel H. Inouye
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1607327929
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 387

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Book Description
Distant Islands is a modern narrative history of the Japanese American community in New York City between America's centennial year and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Often overshadowed in historical literature by the Japanese diaspora on the West Coast, this community, which dates back to the 1870s, has its own fascinating history. The New York Japanese American community was a composite of several micro communities divided along status, class, geographic, and religious lines. Using a wealth of primary sources—oral histories, memoirs, newspapers, government documents, photographs, and more—Daniel H. Inouye tells the stories of the business and professional elites, mid-sized merchants, small business owners, working-class families, menial laborers, and students that made up these communities. The book presents new knowledge about the history of Japanese immigrants in the United States and makes a novel and persuasive argument about the primacy of class and status stratification and relatively weak ethnic cohesion and solidarity in New York City, compared to the pervading understanding of nikkei on the West Coast. While a few prior studies have identified social stratification in other nikkei communities, this book presents the first full exploration of the subject and additionally draws parallels to divisions in German American communities. Distant Islands is a unique and nuanced historical account of an American ethnic community that reveals the common humanity of pioneering Japanese New Yorkers despite diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and life stories. It will be of interest to general readers, students, and scholars interested in Asian American studies, immigration and ethnic studies, sociology, and history. Winner- Honorable Mention, 2018 Immigration and Ethnic History Society First Book Award

Author: David J. O'Brien
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253206565
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
"Slim, well-researched, and readable, this is not only a social history of an ethnic community but a gateway into the ancient psyche of the Japanese." --The San Francisco Review of Books "... straightforward... informative... " --Contemporary Sociology "The Japanese American Experience... will be used with profit by professors and students in sociology and ethnic studies courses, for it is the best general text on Japanese Americans currently in print."--The Journal of American History "... a succinct and insightful account of the community's early struggle for survival in a racist society... " --American Historical Review This concise history of three generations of Japanese Americans focuses on their collective response to the challenges of discrimination and to the strikingly different historical circumstances each generation has faced.

Author: Brian Niiya
Publisher: VNR AG
ISBN: 9780816026807
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
Produced under the auspices of the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, this comprehensive reference culls information from primary sources--Japanese-language texts and documents, oral histories, and other previously neglected or obscured materials--to document the history and nature of the Japanese American experience as told by the people who lived it. The volume is divided into three major sections: a chronology with some 800 entries; a 400-entry encyclopedia covering people, events, groups, and cultural terms; and an annotated bibliography of major works on Japanese Americans. Includes about 80 bandw illustrations and photographs. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Author: Valerie J. Matsumoto
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801481154
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
In 1919, against a backdrop of a long history of anti-Asian nativism, a handful of Japanese families established Cortez Colony in a bleak pocket of the San Joachin Valley. Valerie Matsumoto chronicles conflicts within the community as well as obstacles from without as the colonists responded to the challenges of settlement, the setbacks of the Great Depression, the hardships of World War II internment, and the opportunities of postwar reconstruction. Tracing the evolution of gender and family roles of members of Cortez as well as their cultural, religious, and educational institutions, she documents the persistence and flexibility of ethnic community and demonstrates its range of meaning from geographic location and web of social relations to state of mind.

Author: Stephen S. Fugita
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295800143
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Altered Lives, Enduring Community examines the long-term effects on Japanese Americans of their World War II experiences: forced removal from their Pacific Coast homes, incarceration in desolate government camps, and ultimate resettlement. As part of Seattle's Densho: Japanese American Legacy Project, the authors collected interviews and survey data from Japanese Americans now living in King County, Washington, who were imprisoned during World War II. Their clear-eyed, often poignant account presents the contemporary, post-redress perspectives of former incarcerees on their experiences and the consequences for their life course. Using descriptive material that personalizes and contextualizes the data, the authors show how prewar socioeconomic networks and the specific characteristics of the incarceration experience affected Japanese American readjustment in the postwar era. Topics explored include the effects of incarceration and resettlement on social relationships and community structure, educational and occupational trajectories, marriage and childbearing, and military service and draft resistance. The consequences of initial resettlement location and religious orientation are also examined.