Japanese American And Aleutian Wartime Relocation

Personal Justice Denied tells the extraordinary story of the incarceration of mainland Japanese Americans and Alaskan Aleuts during World War II. Although this wartime episode is now almost universally recognized as a catastrophe, for decades various government officials and agencies defended their actions by asserting a military necessity. The Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment was established by act of Congress in 1980 to investigate the detention program. Over twenty days, it held hearings in cities across the country, particularly on the West Coast, with testimony from more than 750 witnesses: evacuees, former government officials, public figures, interested citizens, and historians and other professionals. It took steps to locate and to review the records of government action and to analyze contemporary writings and personal and historical accounts. The Commission’s report is a masterful summary of events surrounding the wartime relocation and detention activities, and a strong indictment of the policies that led to them. The report and its recommendations were instrumental in effecting a presidential apology and monetary restitution to surviving Japanese Americans and members of the Aleut community.

This revised and expanded edition of Japanese Americans: From Relocation to Redress presents the most complete and current published account of the Japanese American experience from the evacuation order of World War II to the public policy debate over redress and reparations. A chronology and comprehensive overview of the Japanese American experience by Roger Daniels are underscored by first person accounts of relocations by Bill Hosokawa, Toyo Suyemoto Kawakami, Barry Saiki, Take Uchida, and others, and previously undescribed events of the interment camps for “enemy aliens” by John Culley and Tetsuden Kashima. The essays bring us up to the U.S. government’s first redress payments, made forty eight years after the incarceration of Japanese Americans began. The combined vision of editors Roger Daniels, Sandra C. Taylor, and Harry H. L. Kitano in pulling together disparate aspects of the Japanese American experience results in a landmark volume in the wrenching experiment of American democracy.

Part II (p.315-359) concerns the removal of Aleuts to camps in southeastern Alaska and their subsequent resettlement at war's end.