About the Book
December 7, 1941 changed the lives of thousands of Japanese Americans who became "enemy" in the eyes of the United States government within hours. With Pearl Harbor still smoldering, these men would be arrested and put into the enemy alien internment system. As the study of internment has steadily grown, the information about the confinement sites and ability to piece together the experiences of the men within has remained a challenging task.
Camp Livingston, famous as a site for the Louisiana Maneuvers, holds a darker and less well-known history. From 1942-1943, over 1,000 men of Japanese ancestry were held in this internment camp in the pine forests of central Louisiana. The authors approach this camp's history via the experiences and linkages to and through two families, the Miyamotos and Koharas, who are the beating heart at the center of this saga. Through them, the authors have laid out a historical counter narrative that is part biography and part critical exploration of a forgotten chapter of American history.
This book is the first of its kind to focus primarily on exploring Camp Livingston, arguably one of the lesser-known enemy alien internment camps, in depth including its layout, operations, and the daily life and experiences of the internees within.
Table of Contents:
Part I: Foundations in a New Land
Chapter 1: A Consequence of Birth
Chapter 2: Tengoku or Heaven
Chapter 3: A Community Emerges
Chapter 4: Hale?iwa, Hawai?i
Chapter 5: A Temple's Foundation
Part II: Prelude to War
Chapter 6: Watchers on the Eve of War
Chapter 7: New Residents among the Pines
Chapter 8: When the Tigers Pounced
Chapter 9: Looking Westward
Chapter 10: Becoming an Enemy Alien
Part III: Wartime Experiences
Chapter 11: ISN-HJ-131-CI
Chapter 12: Let Photographs Tell the Story
Chapter 13: “Koton, Koton”
Part IV: Camp Livingston
Chapter 14: Life in Camp Livingston
Chapter 15: Prisoners under the Pines
Chapter 16: Art, Community, and Resistance
Chapter 17: Connections to the Outside World
PART V: A Family Reunited
Chapter 18: The Road to Repatriation
Chapter 19: Reunited Behind Barbed Wire
Part VI: After War
Chapter 20: Life beyond War
Chapter 21: Mysterious Memories
Chapter 22: What Remains
Chapter 23: Talk Story
Epilogue
Closing Quote I
Closing Quote II
Appendix I
App
About the Author :
Hayley Johnson is head of the Open Scholarship and Government Publications Department at Louisiana State University.
Sarah Simms is Undergraduate & Student Success Librarian at Louisiana State University.
Review :
Numerous historians have chronicled and investigated various aspects of the incarceration of over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in the US during WW II. While many works reference the A-B-C lists used by federal and military personnel to track and classify supposed enemy aliens prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it is often as a preamble to the creation of camps run by the Wartime Civil Control Administration and War Relocation Authority. As Johnson and Simms point out, far less of the literature follows the nearly 20,000 Issei who became victims of custodial detention beginning on December 7, 1941. This volume serves to rectify that deficiency by unveiling Camp Livingston's all-but-forgotten role as an internment site for over 1,000 men. Using a combination of government documents, letters, diary entries, artwork, and oral histories, the authors have painstakingly reconstructed not only the history of the camp itself, but the experiences of the internees and their families as well. While meticulously researched, this is also not a purely dispassionate and objective history; it often connects to its subjects on an almost personal level. While endnotes abound, a slight drawback is the absence of a full bibliography. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.
Beneath Heavy Pines brings to light, for the first time, one of the most significant yet untold stories of the WWII Japanese American internment. A definitive history of the Camp Livingston Internment Camp in Louisiana, Johnson and Simms tell the story of unjust dislocation, family separation, and incarceration from the perspective of those who experienced the racial and religious animus of the times. Skillfully blending government documents with diaries, letters, and artwork of the internees themselves, Beneath Heavy Pines is a must read for anyone interested in wartime incarceration of those deemed enemy aliens.
Beneath Heavy Pines is a necessary intervention in the study of Japanese Americans during the war. Using oral histories, archival experience, and a rich collection of personal narratives that take the reader from Hawai?i to Louisiana, Johnson and Simms do more than fill a gap in the collective memory of World War II: they present a powerful argument for using diverse research methodologies to explore the realities of life in the internment center at Camp Livingston while reminding historians that there is still much to learn about wartime detention.
We all know big stories like D-Day or Pearl Harbor, but we don't really understand what happened until we learn about the small stories of real people swept up by those major events. Hayley Johnson and Sarah Simms wade into the deluge that was the unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII and use their research skills to rescue the lives of people such as Rev. Buntetsu Miyamoto of Hawai?i and the Kohara family of Louisiana. In this book, we see Johnson and Simms working as intrepid curators of memory resuscitating the amazing stories of ordinary people, who would otherwise be forgotten in the ruins of an old Army fort in the pine forests of Louisiana.
“History detectives” Johnson and Simms, both university librarians, have skillfully mined the available sources to coax dusty archives into vibrant life. Those details, plus interviews with survivors from as far away as Hawai'i, present a fascinating narrative featuring the U.S. Army's Camp Livingston, Louisiana, especially the events surrounding its use as a World War II internment camp for men born in Japan. U.S. residents ineligible for citizenship because of their Japanese birth, they were first unjustifiably labeled as “enemy aliens,” then ripped from their families and eventually sent to Camp Livingston. This sympathetic, often poignant, account includes some of the men's tanka (31-syllable) poetry, expressing their anguish at parting from their families. The authors also describe the horrific, deeply troubling, and little-known U.S. sinking of the repatriation ship, Awa Maru; among the 2,000-plus passengers who died were two Camp Livingston internees hoping to reunite with their families in Japan.
Sarah Simms and Hayley Johnson's book Beneath Heavy Pines reshapes our understanding of the fate of Japanese Americas during World War II by telling the tragic story of the 1,000 people of Japanese ancestry from across the western hemisphere who were rounded up, sent to distant Louisiana, and confined under guard at Camp Livingston. Simms and Johnson have produced a model of historical scholarship, mixing archival research with individual stories at a very human level.
Through their dogged and wide-ranging research, Johnson and Simms uncover the World War II stories of how two related Japanese American families came together in the unlikely state of Louisiana, adding a new dimension to what we know about the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans and about Japanese Americans in the South. The pair have also uncovered a wonderful collection of images, including never before seen photographs of the Japanese American internees held at the Camp Livingston, Louisiana, internment camp.
Johnson and Simms share a belief that librarians are not just custodians of books, but also have an elemental goal of highlighting overlooked or marginalized voices in society. That belief led them into a lengthy project to release the voices of people whose lives were upended by EO 9066, President Franklin Roosevelt's infamous order to intern Americans of Japanese descent during World War II. Their stories proved elusive to find, but extensive archival research and interviews with descendants rescue them from the shadows of history in this excellent book. Camp Livingston in Central Louisiana held prisoners of war from both theaters of operations, but Johnson and Simms share its obscure history as a “relocation center” for Japanese Americans and bring their experiences in the heart of Louisiana vividly to life.
Beneath Heavy Pines gives voice to a thoughtful survivor of the Japanese American incarceration, Reverend Buntetsu Miyamoto, whose journey and reflections are contextualized against the span of his wartime captivity from Hawai'i to Louisiana. This carefully researched volume illuminates and honors the experiences of the Miyamoto and Kohara families, and all of the people who suffered incarceration in so many different sites, such as the pine forested Camp Livingston, atmospherically evoked here by many different recollections. Stories like these remind us that the Japanese American incarceration was a nationwide and even a global construction from which we must still learn.
