Japanese Americans in Chicago

Japanese Americans in Chicago
Author: Alice K. Murata
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 132
Release: 2002
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780738519524

More than two hundred vintage images from family archives, museums, and university collections capture the cultural and economic history of Chicago's Japanese communities.

Free to Die for Their Country

Free to Die for Their Country
Author: Eric L. Muller
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2003-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780226548234

One of the Washington Post's Top Nonfiction Titles of 2001 In the spring of 1942, the federal government forced West Coast Japanese Americans into detainment camps on suspicion of disloyalty. Two years later, the government demanded even more, drafting them into the same military that had been guarding them as subversives. Most of these Americans complied, but Free to Die for Their Country is the first book to tell the powerful story of those who refused. Based on years of research and personal interviews, Eric L. Muller re-creates the emotions and events that followed the arrival of those draft notices, revealing a dark and complex chapter of America's history.

Japanese-Americans in Chicago, Il

Japanese-Americans in Chicago, Il
Author: Alice Kishiye Murata
Publisher: Arcadia Library Editions
Total Pages: 130
Release: 2002-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781531613235

Japanese Americans who choose to reside in Chicago consider it to be the best city in the world. The first Japanese arrived in the city to prepare for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and the building of the Ho-o-den Pavilion. Prior to World War II, only a few hundred Japanese Americans lived in Chicago; however, during the War many were brought from concentration camps to help with the war effort. The number of Japanese-American residents peaked at more than 20,000 by 1945, with half of them returning to their west coast homes when permitted. For those who remained, the acceptance and employment opportunities found in Chicago offered a chance to begin new lives in a more ethnically-diverse city. These recollections, told through the medium of historic photographs, expose what is at the heart of Chicago's Japanese-American community-a deep commitment to patriotism and a devotion to country and civil rights. This book of more than 200 vintage images reveals for the first time aspects of Japanese-American life in Chicago over four generations, through the eyes of those who lived it.

Clark and Division

Clark and Division
Author: Naomi Hirahara
Publisher: Soho Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2021-08-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1641292504

A New York Times Best Mystery Novel of 2021 Set in 1944 Chicago, Edgar Award-winner Naomi Hirahara’s eye-opening and poignant new mystery, the story of a young woman searching for the truth about her revered older sister's death, brings to focus the struggles of one Japanese American family released from mass incarceration at Manzanar during World War II. Chicago, 1944: Twenty-year-old Aki Ito and her parents have just been released from Manzanar, where they have been detained by the US government since the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, together with thousands of other Japanese Americans. The life in California the Itos were forced to leave behind is gone; instead, they are being resettled two thousand miles away in Chicago, where Aki’s older sister, Rose, was sent months earlier and moved to the new Japanese American neighborhood near Clark and Division streets. But on the eve of the Ito family’s reunion, Rose is killed by a subway train. Aki, who worshipped her sister, is stunned. Officials are ruling Rose’s death a suicide. Aki cannot believe her perfect, polished, and optimistic sister would end her life. Her instinct tells her there is much more to the story, and she knows she is the only person who could ever learn the truth. Inspired by historical events, Clark and Division infuses an atmospheric and heartbreakingly real crime with rich period details and delicately wrought personal stories Naomi Hirahara has gleaned from thirty years of research and archival work in Japanese American history.

Double Cross

Double Cross
Author: Jacalyn D. Harden
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2003
Genre: African Americans
ISBN: 9781452905969

Life After Manzanar

Life After Manzanar
Author: Naomi Hirahara
Publisher: Heyday.ORIM
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1597144460

“A compelling account of the lives of Japanese and Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II . . . instructive and moving.”—Nippon.com From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C. Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account of the “Resettlement”: the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given twenty-five dollars and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of housing and jobs. Hirahara and Lindquist weave new and archival oral histories into an engaging narrative that illuminates the lives of former internees in the postwar era, both in struggle and unlikely triumph. Readers will appreciate the painstaking efforts that rebuilding required and will feel inspired by the activism that led to redress and restitution—and that built a community that even now speaks out against other racist agendas. “Through this thoughtful story, we see how the harsh realities of the incarceration experience follow real lives, and how Manzanar will sway generations to come. When you finish the last chapter you will demand to read more.”—Gary Mayeda, national president of the Japanese American Citizens League “An engaging, well-written telling of how former Manzanar detainees played key roles in remembering and righting the wrong of the World War II incarceration.”—Tom Ikeda, executive director of Densho