Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II by Roger Daniels

Concentration Camps USA: Japanese Americans and World War II Reviews

• 
  sdw

  If you know little about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Roger Daniels’s Concentration Camps USA is a good place to start. Even if you are familiar with the literature, Daniels work is frequently enough cited that it is worth reading the original. Daniels book manages to touch on the majority of important themes within the history of internment, from the question of responsibility (why did internment happen? Whose fault was it?) to the draft resistance at Heart Mountain, and legal histories of relevant court cases. Daniels overall argument is that the history of American racism is to blame for the internment, and as such America as a whole deserves some of the blame. He states, “The evacuation of 1942 did not occur in a vacuum, but was based on almost a century of anti-Oriental fear, prejudice, and misunderstanding” (2). Overall it is a fairly short readable book that covers a lot of ground and remains historically relevant.
• 
  Ram

  I mean, it was a'ite, but "concentration camp" is ahistorical and just plain incorrect. Sorry, Rog.
• 
  Selena

  Re-reading this as research for my writing.