Behind Barbed Wire: The Imprisonment of Japanese Americans During World War II

Daniel C. Davis, 1967

The book starts out with a description of the attack on Pearl Harbor, then follows with a brief description of the FBI raids, the fear of attacks by neighbors, the JACL and follows that up in the next chapter with a description of the initial immigration in the U.S. by Japanese.

This goes into the history of the immigration, anti-Japanese prejudice and government efforts to control and then stop immigration.

One chapter goes into the origin of some of the hysterical rumors of imminent Japanese attack on the West Coast, tracing those to radio operators who were rather incompetent, where they were picking up broadcasts from Japan but thought they were coming from very near to the U.S.

DeWitt and his program are discussed next, followed by the arrest of all Japanese on Terminal Island, a fisherman's place. It then covers the assembly centers and the movement of the internees to those places. A description is given of the assembly centers and the lives of the people there. Next is similar information about the internment camps themselves. This includes some of the violence in the camps.

The next chapter goes into the loyalty questionnaire, the confusion and the results, and the establishment of Tule Lake as a segregation center for "troublemakers." Then it follows with a description of the troubles at Tule Lake.

Next comes a description of those Nisei who volunteered for the U.S. military, then the next chapter deals with the court trials over the internment issue. The book then goes into the closing of the camps and the troubles at Tule Lake and the move by some of the internees to renounce their U.S. citizenship and return to Japan.

This is a fairly nice book giving a broad general outline of what happened in relation to this issue. It also has a good variety of photographs.

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Japanese-American Internment Camps index page
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