In defense of justice
Subtitle: Joseph Kurihara and the Japanese American struggle for equality
By: Eileen H. Tamura
Series: The Asian American experience; Asian American experience
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 228
ISBN-13: 9780252095061; 9780252037788
Subjects: Ethnic identity; Japanese Americans; Evacuation and relocation of Japanese Americans (United States : 1942-1945) fast (OCoLC)fst01801850; Cultural assimilation; Tule Lake Relocation Center; Evacuation and relocation, 1942-1945; Social conditions; Manzanar War Relocation Center; Western; Historical; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY; History; Biography; HISTORY
Description: As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, the controversial figure Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In emotional, often inflammatory speeches, Kurihara attacked the U.S. government for its treatment of innocent citizens and immigrants. Because he articulated what other inmates dared not voice openly, he became a spokesperson for camp inmates. In this astute biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawaii to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara worked throughout his youth and early adult life to make a place for himself as an American: seeking quality education, embracing Christianity, and serving as a soldier in the U.S. Army during World War I. Though he bore the brunt of anti-Japanese hostility in the decades before World War II, he remained adamantly positive about the prospects of his own life in America. The U.S. entry into WWII and the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese destroyed that perspective and transformed Kurihara. As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in the "Manzanar incident," a serious civil disturbance that erupted on Dec. 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, where he had never been before. He never returned to the United States. Kurihara's personal story illuminates the tragedy of the forced removal and incarceration of U.S. citizens among the West Coast Nikkei, even as it dramatizes the heroic resistance to that injustice. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, In Defense of Justice explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

English.

Print version record.
Table of contents: title: Foreword; title: Preface; title: Acknowledgments; title: Introduction; title: Growing up American; title: A Yank in France, a Jap in America; title: To Manzanar; title: Resistance in Manzanar; title: Stepping back; title: Isolating citizen dissidents; title: Turmoil at Tule; title: Renunciation; title: Japan; title: Afterword; title: Notes; title: Glossary; title: Bibliography; title: Index.