Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment

During World War II some 120,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes and detained in concentration camps in several states. These Japanese Americans lost millions of dollars in property and were forced to live in so-called "assembly centers" surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed sentries. In this insightful and groundbreaking work, Brian Hayashi reevaluates the three-year ordeal of interred Japanese Americans. Using previously undiscovered documents, he examines the forces behind the U.S. government's decision to establish internment camps. His conclusion: the motives of government officials and top military brass likely transcended the standard explanations of racism, wartime hysteria, and leadership failure. Among the other surprising factors that played into the decision, Hayashi writes, were land development in the American West and plans for the American occupation of Japan. What was the long-term impact of America's actions? While many historians have explored that question, Hayashi takes a fresh look at how U.S. concentration camps affected not only their victims and American civil liberties, but also people living in locations as diverse as American Indian reservations and northeast Thailand.

Table of Contents:
LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF TABLES xi PREFACE xiii ABBREVIATIONS xvii Introduction 1 PROLOGUE: Beyond Civil Rights 13 CHAPTER ONE: Governors and Their Advisers, 1918-1942 16 CHAPTER TWO: The Governed: Japanese Americans and Politics, 1880-1942 40 CHAPTER THREE: Establishing the Structures of Internment, from Limited to Mass Internment, 1942-1943 76 CHAPTER FOUR: The Liberal Democratic Way of Management, 1942-1943 107 CHAPTER FIVE: "Why Awake a Sleeping Lion?" Governance during the Quiet Period, 1943-1944 148 CHAPTER SIX: "Taking Away the Candy": Relocation, the Twilight of the Japanese Empire, and Japanese American Politics, 1944-1945 180 CHAPTER SEVEN: The Long Shadow of Internment 207 EPILOGUE: Toward Human Rights 219 NOTES 223 A NOTE ON SOURCES 295 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 305 INDEX 309

About the Author :
Brian Masaru Hayashi is Associate Professor of Human Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, and author of "For the Sake of Our Japanese Brethren: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895-1942".

Review :
Hayashi's book provides a newer, deeper insight into Japanese American history. Hayashi's book is a masterpiece and should be read by anyone writing on the Japanese American internment. -- Eriko Yamamoto History This fresh and far-reaching interpretation of the World War II Japanese American exclusion and detention experience achieves benchmark historiographical status... Brian Hayashi has written a book that dramatically reconfigures how the topic of the Japanese American internment will be approached in the coming generation of scholarship. -- Arthur A. Hansen Journal of American History Brian Masaru Hayashi's ambitious effort makes available much new archival data and presents original and provocative interpretations... Democratizing the Enemy is an original and stimulating examination of the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans, and as such, it brings new perspectives to the topic. It should be read by all those interested in this unique and tumultuous period. -- Stephen S. Fugita Western Historical Quarterly