Too Long Been Silent: Japanese-Americans Speak Out
Roger W. Axford, 1986
The book opens with a statement of the author's feelings about the internment and an explanation about the nature of Japanese-American culture, that it's not all "Yellow Peril" or all "the perfect minority" forms, that it's a much more complex culture than that.
The book starts with a brief interview with Dr. Gordon Hirabayashi, one of the people who challenged the legality of what was being done to the Japanese-Americans during World War II. One of the things he does is challenge the use of the word "evacuation," saying that it's too humanitarian a word for what was actually done, evacuation implying getting away from some natural or man-made disaster.
He also favors the use of the word "concentration camps" rather than "relocation centers" for what the Japanese-Americans were placed into. He also goes into the history of exactly what happened to him as far as his arrest and what follows goes.
This type of in-person interview is quite rare in the various books on the internment. Normally a person's story is told, but in this case the person involved tells it which makes the story even more real and impressive.
The next person interviewed is William Hohri, "redress fighter and author." Among other things he writes about his internment at Manzanar.
The third person is Hannah Takagi Holmes. She is deaf and was deaf when, as a child, she and her parents were sent to Manzanar. To help her, her parents managed to get sent to the Tule Lake camp which had a Helen Keller School for the deaf that was there. The school closed two months later, though, due to the controversy in the camp over the loyalty questionnaire. She ended up in Illinois at a school for the deaf that was there. She talks about discrimination she encountered, not just against her but against a black friend of hers.
The fourth person is Charles Kishiyama, with the police department in Tempe, Arizona. He was ten when he was put into one of the camps. The next is Nelson Kituse, a pharmacist, who was in the Poston camp when he was younger. He was involved in the redress movement. Kenneth Matsushige is next, writing about Heart Mountain.
Minoru Mochizuki is the next person in the book. This is another of the interned people, this one being interned at Tule Lake. He also writes about the loyalty questionnaire. An interview with the Rev. Perry Saito is next. This is another person that was interned at Tule Lake. H. G. Sameshima is the next person in the book. He ended up in the Gila River internment camp.
Amy Okagaki & Esther Stone are next in the book. Esther Stone is a friend of Amy Okagaki who ended up at the Heart Mountain camp. Kaoru Sugiyama is next and is another person who ended up at the Gila River camp. Aiko Nakane is next
It's sort of an interesting book but none of the interviews are in-depth and they don't generally deal with people who would be recognizable to people reading the history of the camps, so it's a book that's interesting to read but not essential.
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