Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity

Yasuko I.Takezawa, 1995

The book is about the Japanese-Americans from Seattle and what they went through in the internment process and their redress movement.

The author goes into the history of the Japanese in Seattle with various tables about Asian immigration trends and information on Japanese ethnicity. Then the author goes into the history of the redress movement, staring with the 1970's. The government ended up paying about $37 million out on 26,558 claims. Estimated losses in property and income ran a minimum of $119 million up to around $370 million, however.

The book also covers other related laws, however, including the Emergency Detention Act, part of the Internal Security Act of 1950, which set up six camps including Tule Lake for anyone taken due to insurrection within the country, sabotage or espionage. Through the efforts of the Japanese-American community and a somewhat reluctant JACL that measure was repealed in 1971.

There apparently was a lot of disagreement within the JACL over whether or not to sponsor the redress movement. A series of "remembrance days" helped to get momentum going for the redress movement in the 80's. Even though successful legislation eventually was obtained, funding that was a difficult and time-consuming process, as the book points out in detail.

The third chapter is entitled "Nisei Experience." It goes into the history of the Japanese in Seattle and cultural differences between the Issei and the Nisei. This is a very detailed chapter.

The chapter also describes life in the camps, problems in the camps and problems that resulted after the camps were closed. This part of the book is the same type of information found in other books and the author does a good job of presenting it.

The fourth chapter is entitled "Sansei Experience." The first thing the author points up is that the Sansei generation has grown up in a more ethnically diverse environment than the Issei and Nisei who tended to live in conclaves consisting almost entirely of people of Japanese ancestry. The Sansei also did not automatically learn to speak Japanese nor did they grow up fully bathed in Japanese culture and customs. They were becoming more and more "Americanized."

The author talks with a number of people and gets their personal experiences in growing up.

The next chapter is about how the various generations have talked, or not talked, about the internment experience. The chapter is quite interesting in how it explores the attitudes of the various generations, especially with the Sansei seeing the interment camps more as a political injustice than their parents see it.

The last chapter is basically more information related to the previous chapter, again dealing with different outlooks on the part of the different generations of people of Japanese ancestry.

An interesting book with a lot of information in it that is similar to other books. The strength lies in the examination of cultural differences among the different generations of people of Japanese ancestry in the U.S.

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