Japanese American Incarceration - (Politics and Culture in Modern America) by Stephanie D Hinnershitz (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Japanese American Incarceration argues that the incarceration of Japanese Americans created a massive system of prison labor that blurred the lines between free and forced work during World War II"--

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"

Hinnershitz's groundbreaking account investigates how the prison labor system was imposed on Japanese Americans and permanent resident non-citizens of Japanese ancestry who were confined in War Relocation
Authority (WRA) incarceration camps (formerly 'internment' camps) during World War II...[A] significant contribution to the literature of Japanese American incarceration.

"-- "Pacific Historical Review"

About the Author

Stephanie Hinnershitz is a historian with the Institute for the Study of War and Democracy at the National WWII Museum and author of two previous books, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian Americans and Civil Rights in the South and Race, Religion, and Civil Rights: Asian Students on the West Coast, 1900-1968.