Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience

I thought I knew a good bit about the internment of Japanese-American citizens during World War II before I read this book, but I was badly mistaken. This is a very good gathering of different sources: journal excerpts, recollections, legal documents, photos, poetry, ect., that give a complete and horrible picture of these events. The parallels to an unfortunate number of things happening currently in our government/society are a real demonstration of the adadge that if we don't learn from history we are condemned to repeat it.

Only what we could carry, edited by Lawson Fusao Inada, is a compilation of photography, drawings, poems, personal stories, legal documents, and memoirs of the Japanese Americans that were put into internment by the American government after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. Not only did this book include the interneesEexperience and their feelings, the interneesEAmerican friends and the media who were on the government side were included.Some of the interesting facts in this book were the propaganda images. One that really struck me as an interesting propaganda was titled, "How to spot a Jap.E In a cartoon style, it mentions the differences between a Chinese and a Japanese. The drawings are put there so that it'll be easy for the public to differentiate them. I'm Japanese and I found this propaganda amusing. By just looking or reading the propaganda, it gives the reader the history and portrays how so many Americans were narrow minded and easily persuaded.

This book has an impressive collection of accounts from various sources and manages to touch upon any significant Japanese American experience during World War II.I purchased this book for its coverage of the Nisei 100th and 442nd batalions, and was impressed at the varied perspectives included. From an excerpt from Daniel Inouye's account to a reflection by a concentration camp survivor liberated by men of the 442nd, Only What We Could Carry certainly covers the map.A good source for those studying any aspect of Japanese American life during the war, and an excellent one for those studying the subject in general.

Only What We Could Carry provides an important account of the Japanese American internment experience after the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor. Personal documents, art and propaganda are presented in a title which captures the camp experience in a series of personal autobiographical revelations. Highly recommended.

If you think about it Racial Profiling, much in the news of late, is not a new phenomena in the U.S. We have a long history, almost a tradition, of singling out groups of citizens, usually in the name of some war (Indian wars, War on Drugs), for special treatment under the law. It's not a new practice but it invariably ends up being a tragic mistake. One such tragedy was the imprisonment of Japanese American citizens during the Second World War. While there are a number of books dealing with the political and legal consequences of such governmental action, as well as a growing number of memoirs, to date there has not been an anthology of the voices of the Internment. That oversight has been corrected with this book and what a wonderful addition to the literature it is. In less than 3 months following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor with it's understandable wartime panic, in excess of 100,000 Japanese Americans living in the Western United States were forced from their homes, many with only 48 hours notice, and sent to internment camps scattered among 14 states. Men, women, and children, whose only crime was being of Japanese descent, were banished to what many scholars call concentration camps. They "fit the pattern" and indeed governmental agencies published posters of detailing what "typical" Japanese looked like so they would be easier to detect. This book,using the personal recollections, art, documents, and poetry of many of the internees as well as a number of witnesses and friends, tells the story of the camp experience which is a haunting description of fear, anger, confusion and shame. These voices, reduced to paper, are a tragic reminder of the affects of war, not only on direct participants but frequently on innocents as well. This description by an internee of the physical conditions at a California Assembly Center, where she lived for 6 months, is typical: "Posts strung with chicken-wire appeared on the northeast corner of the camp near the back gate by the railroad siding. The entire area around the gate, including the laundry and the toilets, was completely fenced off, leaving one section open." Perhaps this description of the Tule Lake, California camp will sound familiar:"The guard towers were turrets equipped with machine guns. The outer perimeter was patrolled by a half-dozen tanks and armored Jeeps." There were 18,000 internees in Camp Tule Lake. Half were children. This poem by an internee, one of many in the book, was of particular interest to me: "A daybreak stars disappear, where di I discard my dreams?" Some of the art in the book depicting conditions in the camps will break your heart. Space does not permit a review that will do justice to this book. Suffice to say that it is a testament to the spirit, will, determination, dignity and strength of the Japanese American citizens that were forced to endure such humiliation, degradation, and emotional trauma. A friend of mine say's she knows why the lady holding the scal