This is a superb history about one of the more shameful chapters in U.S. history. Given all the books and articles about the internment of over 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II, one wonders if there is really anything new to say about this subject, but Greg Robinson rises to the task and tells the story uncommonly well.
His gaze extends from the pre-WWII era to postwar legacies, but the heart of the book focuses on the wartime era and how it affected Japanese Americans in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Latin America. The author, who teaches at the University of Quebec, emphasizes throughout the text that though the U.S. treated its internees poorly, the even more racially charged atmosphere prevailing in Canada saw those in British Columbia dealt with far more harshly.
Robinson reveals the extent of prewar surveillance and the deep suspicions government officials harbored toward all Japanese Americans, based on nonexistent evidence of disloyalty. In 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt, noting that Japanese sailors frequented Hawaii and mingled with local residents, wrote: "Every Japanese citizen or noncitizen on the Island of Oahu who meets these ships or has any connection with their officers or men should be secretly but definitely identified and his or her name placed on a special list of those who would be the first to be placed in a concentration camp in the event of trouble."