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Last Witnesses Erica Harth Complete Edition

Last Witnesses, edited by Erica Harth, reflects on the wartime internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, featuring personal narratives and historical insights. The book emphasizes the importance of remembering this episode in American history, especially in light of contemporary issues regarding civil liberties. It includes contributions from various authors and a chronology of events related to the internment.

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100% found this document useful (1 vote)
13 views158 pages

Last Witnesses Erica Harth Complete Edition

Last Witnesses, edited by Erica Harth, reflects on the wartime internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, featuring personal narratives and historical insights. The book emphasizes the importance of remembering this episode in American history, especially in light of contemporary issues regarding civil liberties. It includes contributions from various authors and a chronology of events related to the internment.

Uploaded by

libiyaasmee
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LAST WITNESSES
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LAST WITNESSES
REFLECTIONS
ON THE WARTIME INTERNMENT
OF JAPANESE AMERICANS
E D I T E D B Y
ERICA HARTH
LAST WITNESSES
Copyright © Erica Harth, 2001.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

First published in hardcover in 2001 by palgrave

First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ paperback edition: May 2003


175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave


Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and
other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and
other countries.

ISBN 1–4039–6230–8

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data


Last witnesses : reflections on the wartime interment of Japanese Americans /
edited by Erica Harth.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1–4039–6230–8
1. Japanese Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945. 2. Japanese
Americans—Evacuation and relocation, 1942–1945—Personal narratives. 3.
Japanese Americans—Biography. I. Harth, Erica.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

First PALGRAVE MACMILLAN paperback edition: May 2003

D769.8.A6 L37 2001


940.54’7273—dc21
2001021293

Design by Letra Libre, Inc.

First Edition: November 2001


10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America.


To my first-grade classmates at Manzanar,
and in memory of my parents.
This page intentionally left blank
C O N T E N T S

List of Photographs ix
Acknowledgments xi

Erica Harth 1
Introduction

PART I
PARENTS AND CHILDREN
Toyo Suyemoto (with Susan Richardson) 21
Another Spring
Mitsuye Yamada 35
Legacy of Silence (I)
Jeni Yamada 47
Legacy of Silence (II)
Donna K. Nagata 61
Echoes from Generation to Generation

PART II
FAMILY SECRETS
Stewart David Ikeda 75
Mixing Stories
Marnie Mueller 99
A Daughter’s Need to Know
George F. Brown 115
Return to Gila River
PART III
WHAT WE TOOK FROM THE CAMPS
John Y. Tateishi 129
Memories from Behind Barbed Wire
Patrick S. Hayashi 139
Pictures from Camp
Robert J. Maeda 153
“Isamu Noguchi: 5–7–A, Poston, Arizona”
Sue Kunitomi Embrey 167
From Manzanar to the Present: A Personal Journey
Erica Harth 187
Democracy for Beginners

PART IV
FROM THE PAST TO THE FUTURE
Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro 205
Ethnic Expectations:
The Politics of Staging the Internment Camps
Chizu Omori 215
The Life and Times of Rabbit in the Moon
Valerie Nao Yoshimura 229
The Legacy of the Battle of Bruyères:
Reflections of a Sansei Francophile
Allan Wesley Austin 253
Loyalty and Concentration Camps in America:
The Japanese American Precedent
and the Internal Security Act of 1950
Jason Kohn and Cara Lemon 271
Nineteen in ’98: A Conversation on Studying the Internment

Appendix: Chronology of Events 283


Contributors 287
Suggestions for Further Reading 291
Index 295
L I S T O F P H O T O G R A P H S

Toyo Suyemoto’s father, Tsutomu Howard Suyemoto,


when a mining engineering student at the
University of California at Berkeley, about 1911. 25
Toyo Suyemoto’s mother, Mitsu Hyakusoku Suyemoto,
Japan, about 1902 or 1903. 26
Mitsuye Yamada in majorette boots and her mother,
Hide Yasutake at Minidoka, Spring 1943. 45
Soldier friend, Mrs. Yasutake, Mitsuye, and brother,
Joseph, at Minidoka, Spring 1943. 46
Jeni Yamada, about 1955. 50
Jeni Yamada and her mother, Mitsuye,
March 1957. 51
George F. Brown at the site of
his family’s barracks, Gila River, 1999. 116
“April 11, 1943, Hatsuki Wakasa, Shot by M. P.”
Watercolor by Chiura Obata.
By permission of the Obata family. 140
First-grade class at Manzanar, 1944–45. 189
Street sign in Bruyères. 230
A Bruyérois spontaneously offers a token
of his gratitude to a Nisei veteran in Bruyères. 231
This page intentionally left blank
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

FROM THE EARLIEST STAGES OF THIS BOOK, my efforts have met with con-
sistent encouragement, support, and help. I feel privileged to have worked with a
group of contributors who have expanded my intellectual and emotional horizons
and who have been unfailingly cooperative. Writers whom I did not know previ-
ously have become friends, even if in certain cases only via e-mail; with others, the
friendships have been strengthened. For me, it has been a deeply rewarding expe-
rience to find such collaborative spirit and good will.
My thanks reach beyond the book’s covers. Deirdre Bonifaz and Phyllis R.
Stein helped me to get started on the project. Paul Watanabe gave me valuable
guidance in the choice of contributors. My conversations with him and with Mar-
garet Yamamoto have energized my work on the book. To Charlotte Sagoff and
Anne O. Freed I owe much gratitude for their gifts of source material. Discussions
with Dean Hashimoto, May and Tetsuo Takayanagi, and participants in the an-
nual international seminar on American legal history held at Boston College have
stimulated and refreshed my thinking on the internment. Thanks, too, to the
many Brandeis undergraduates who have kept me on my toes with their questions
and curiosity about this crucial episode of American history. The Marion and
Jasper Whiting Foundation and Brandeis University provided me with financial
support for archival research and preparation of the manuscript.
To encouraging and informative friends—Joseph Boskin, Juliet and Victor
Brudney, Karen Klein, William Shay, and Ellen Schrecker, among many others—
I am profoundly grateful. Dorothy Kaufmann gave me invaluable help through
her reading of my work in manuscript. Thanks to Dave Wisniewski at Brandeis, to
my indexer, Marcia Carlson, and to the editorial and production staff members at
Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press: Michael Flamini, Amanda Johnson, Rick Delaney,
and Sabahat Chaudhary, for their ongoing interest, helpfulness, and patience.
And especially, I thank David H. Gallant for his limitless generosity in offer-
ing me editorial advice, logistical and emotional support, soul food, and countless
other precious intangibles that have facilitated and enriched my task.
This page intentionally left blank
E R I C A H A R T H

INTRODUCTION

ON SEPTEMBER 12, 2001, THE BANNER HEADLINE OF THE BOSTON GLOBE


read “New Day of Infamy.” Comparisons of September 11 with the Japanese at-
tack on Pearl Harbor of December 7, 1941, became commonplace. In the press,
articles started to appear with titles such as “War on Terrorism Stirs Memory of
Internment” (The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2001). Scary indications popped up
that civil liberties might be sacrificed to considerations of security. Two months
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, one poll revealed that
64 percent of the public believed that in wartime the president should have the au-
thority to change or abridge constitutional rights.
If you’re tempted to see the mass detention of ethnic Japanese after Pearl
Harbor as nothing more than history, you might want to think twice.* Suddenly
the need for historical memory has become more urgent than ever. The roundup
of hundreds placed in federal custody, the prospect of military tribunals, the sus-
pension of rules of confidentiality between lawyers and imprisoned terrorist sus-
pects, the USA Patriot Act of 2001, the broadening of the FBI’s powers of search
and surveillance, and other antiterrorist measures following September 11 consti-
tute what Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties
Union, has called “the greatest challenge to civil liberties since World War II.”
How much have we learned from the wartime internment of up to 120,000
ethnic Japanese, two-thirds of whom were American citizens, and all of whom
were guiltless of any act of sabotage or espionage?1 The infamous Supreme Court

* For a chronological summary of the Japanese American internment, see the Appendix.
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