HST 289: Concentration Camps

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons and a dance band called the Jive Bombers who would play any popular song except the  nation's #1 hit: "Don't Fence Me In." Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention . . . and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States. From the Paperback edition.

In this timely book, Stephanie Bangarth studies the efforts and discourse of anti-internment advocates, and discusses the various cases they brought before the courts, as well as the arguements Japanese Canadains raised in their own defence. These critiques of the governement's removal and deportation policies were seminal examples of a growing general interest in civil rights, and would provide a foundation for rights activism in subsequent years. This book offers valuable perspective for today's debates over ethnic and racial profiling, treatment of "enemy combatants," and tensions between civil-liberty and security imperatives.