San Antonio College Library

Author Joseph D. Harrington has written an informative and insightful history of the Nisei (Second-generation Japanese Americans), working for the U.S. armed forces in the Pacific during World War II. This is no whitewashed narrative, as it exposes U.S. internment camps, prejudices, and the frustrations of patriotic Japanese-Americans who wanted to fight for their country, but were initially rebuffed. As the book relates, not all Nisei were in favor...

"A comprehensive history of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team in World War II. When Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Americans reacted with revulsion and horror. In the patriotic war fever that followed, thousands of volunteers--including Japanese Americans--rushed to military recruitment centers. Except for those in the Hawaii National Guard, who made up the 100th Infantry Battalion, the U.S. Army initially turned Japanese...

"Following December 7, 1941, when the United States government interned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry evicted from scattered settlements throughout the West Coast states, why was a much larger number concentrated in the Hawaiian Islands war zone not similarly incarcerated? At the root of the story is an inclusive community that worked from the ground up to protect an embattled segment of its population. Where the onset of World War II surprised...