Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

“Yellow Peril”: Issei Pioneers and the Anti-Chinese Legacy 3

The Movement for Japanese Exclusion 6

“200 Percent” American: Emergence of the Nisei 9

War Hysteria. Racism, and Political Expedience 12

Executive Order 9066: “Military Necessity”? 15

Mass Removal of “All Persons of Japanese Ancestry” 18

Administering the Concentration Camps 21

Life Behind Barbed Wire 23

Violence and Death by Deadly Force 26

The Botched Loyalty Questionnaire 29

Nikkei Soldiers and Draft Resisters 32

The Wartime Supreme Court Test Cases 35

Release and Return 38

Recovery: “Model” or “Marginal” Minority? 42

Breaking the Silence: Nikkei Confront the Nightmare 44

The Movement for Redress 48

The Commission’s Report and Recommendations 51

“Military Necessity” and the Coram Nobis Cases 53

Epilogue 55

Note on Terminology 68

Selected Bibliography 69

General Work on Japanese American History 69

The World War II Incarceration of Japanese Americans 72

Postwar Recovery and the Redress Movement 83

Films, Videos, and DVDs 84

Web Sites and the Internet 86

Index 88

Map, Documents (Executive Order 9066, and Instructions to implement Civilian Exclusion Order No. 108), and Photographs follow page 56

About the Author

Nadine Ishitani Hata was emeritus professor of historyand emeritus vice president for Academic Affairs at El CaminoCollege in Torrance, California. She served two terms on theCalifornia State Historical Resources Commission whenMazanar and Tule Lake concentration camps received historic sitestatus, vice chair of the California State Advisory Committee tothe U.S. Commission on the Civil Rights, and was elected to thegoverning boards of the American Historical Association and the LosAngeles Conservancy. Born in 1941 and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii,she died in 2005 of metastasized breast cancer. Donald Teruo Hata is emeritus professor of history atCalifornia State University Dominguez Hills and recipient of theCSU Trustees Systemwide Outstanding Professor Award. He served asplanning commissioner and city councilman in Gardena, California,on the governing boards of the California Historical Society of andthe Historical Society of Southern California, and as an electedofficer of the American Historical Association. He was born in1939in East Los Angeles and incarcerated at the age of three in theU.S. War Relocation Authority concentration camp at Gila River, AZduring World War II.