Synopses & Reviews
Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all ofand#160;those citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated Southand#8212;Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansasand#8212;locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps,
Concentration Camps on the Home Front is an eye-opening account of the inmatesand#8217; experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria.
While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howardand#8217;s extensive research gives voice toand#160;those whoseand#160;stories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism.and#160;In additionand#160;to this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the governmentand#8217;s aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves.
Howardand#8217;s re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. Concentration Camps on the Home Front rewrites a notorious chapter in American historyand#8212;a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resilienceand#160;in the face ofand#160;even the most grievous injustices.
Review
and#8220;This splendid study is a meticulous, piercing account of the two detention camps set up in Arkansas for Japanese Americans during World War II. John Howard has an unusual array of gifts. Heand#8217;s a brilliant researcher, a stylist of clarity and wit and a writer with rare narrative skill. He is also astonishingly well informed on a wide array of subjects, and superbly contextualizes his given subject. Combining an activistand#8217;s conscience with a scholarand#8217;s precision,and#160;Howard hasand#160;produced a moving, even searing work about American racism and imperialism.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;John Howard brings fresh perspectives to the literature of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II, introducing readers to the two camps in the segregated South and lending us his sharp eye for issues of race, sexuality, and empire. His insightful meditations on those themes, his focus on individual people, and his lively writing make this book as enlightening and exhilarating as its subject is painful and frightening. Scholars of the topic and those like me, who teach about it, will discover brand new angles; more general readers will encounter profound challenges to conventional ideas about America.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;John Howard offers a powerful and even daring reinterpretation of the incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.and#160;Howard, one of the best historians of gender and sexuality writing today, has done significant and imaginative research that transforms the familiar tale of patriotic Americans fallen victim to wartime excess into something much more complex.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;The great strength of John Howardand#8217;s book is that he not only asks new questions about the familiar story of the camps, but also that he has done a great deal of original research in material that has been largely unexploited. This is not a standard kind of camp history but something elseand#8212;more imaginative but deeply rooted in the sources created by administrators and inmates. This is an important book, often gripping, and sure to be controversial.and#8221;
Review
"[The book] holds up a critical lens to American society and values, raising such hot-button issues as race, family, gender politics, capitalism, individualism, immigration and nationalism. As such, it is a valuable contribution to the scholarship of the Japanese-American relocation and internment."
About the Author
John Howard is professor in and head of the Department of American Studies at Kingand#8217;s College London and the author of Men Like That: A Southern Queer History, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Unnatural but Not Un-American
Not American, Not Again
Human Differences, Human Rights
1. Expansion and Restriction
Christian Empire
Self-Sufficiency, Sandalwood, and Sugar
White Citizenship, Racial Hierarchy
2. Subversion
Perverse Sexuality
House Un-American Activities
Segregation versus Extermination
3. Concentration and Cooperation
Collective Living
Cooperative Enterprises
Competitive Sports
Participatory Democracy
4. Camp Life
Gendered Spaces
Caucasian Environments
Unusual Places
5. Race, War, Dances
Complicating the Color Line
Courting within the Color Lines
Authorizing Gender Roles
6. Americanization and Christianization
Schooling in the Nation
Drawing Out the Nation
Safeguarding Buddhism
Worshipping of the Nation
7. Strikes and Resistance
Disputes over Pay and Conditions
The Woodcutters Strike and the Death of Seizo Imada
The Motor Repair Strike
The General Strike and the Death of Haruji Ego
8. Segregation, Expatriation, Annihilation
Neither a Trial nor Inquisition
Tule Lake
Hiroshima
9. Resettlement and Dispersal
Normal American Communities
The Suicide of Julia Dakuzaku
Plantation versus Cooperative Colony
10. Occupation and Statehood
Adopting the American Way
Queering the Empire
Rock and#8217;nand#8217; Roll and Redemption
Epilogue
Democracy Is for the Unafraid
Clichand#233;s of American Happiness
and#160;
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index