Overview
From the epilogue by former Supreme Court Justice Tom C. Clark:"That pictures can express truth more succinctly than words is proved here in the images of Dorothea Lange and the other photographers who documented the Japanese American relocation of World War II. The wistful, forlorn look of the children; the hopeless, dejected expression of their elders; the Nisei Grill that soon will be 'under new management'; the foreboding sign declaring that all one's possessions must be sold; the white storekeeper's sneering words 'We don't want any Japs back here EVER!'; the concentration camps; the armed sentries; the deportation lines—each is a powerful reminder of a nightmare that was acted out in our land of the free, all as the result of racism and wartime hysteria...."Published by The MIT Press for the California Historical Society.
Image: The cover of the book "Executive Order 9066", featuring a black background with the title in white text and a central black and white photograph of a young Japanese American child wearing a coat and an identification tag. The text "THE INTERNMENT OF 110,000 JAPANESE AMERICANS" is also visible.
Specifications
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| ASIN | 0262030551 |
| Publisher | Mit Pr |
| Publication Date | January 1, 1972 |
| Edition | Second printing |
| Language | English |
| Print Length | 120 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 9780262030557 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0262030557 |
| Item Weight | 1.5 pounds |
Authors
- Maisie Conrat (View Author Page)
- Richard Conrat (View Author Page)
Customer Reviews
Belongs in every high school and public library
On February 19, 1942 - seventy-four days after Pearl Harbor - President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, whereby over the next few months 110,000 Japanese-Americans were sent for the duration of the War to ten internment camps in the hinterlands of the U.S. The "relocation" of these Japanese-Americans, most of them U.S. citizens and born in the U.S., constituted the most blatant disregard of settled constitutional law as applied to a large class of people as any other formal act of the U.S. government in the 20th Century. Even the Supreme Court was overcome by the hysteria of fear and racism. On the fiftieth anniversary of Pearl Harbor, President George H.W. Bush formally acknowledged that the internment of Americans of Japanese ancestry was "a great injustice" and he vowed that "it will never be repeated." I'm not so optimistic. But widespread perusal of books such as this by the general American citizenry would help guard against any such appalling lapses in the future. Perusing and absorbing EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 should take most people about an hour. The bulk of the book consists of about sixty photographs taken of the internment enterprise. Most are powerful and moving, some extremely so. For example: a group of Japanese-American girls, with hands over hearts, saying the Pledge of Allegiance in April 1942, a few weeks before they were sent to the camps; a lengthy stream of Japanese-Americans crossing a bridge on Bainbridge Island, Washington, dressed up and toting satchels and being escorted by armed and helmeted soldiers; numerous photos of evacuees with identification tags affixed to their coats awaiting processing; and - the most touching to me - a 23-year-old Japanese-American in the uniform of the U.S. Army standing next to his 53-year-old mother in the strawberry field where she was an agricultural worker (he had been furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for the evacuation). There also are eighteen pages of text containing five brief essays. Two in particular should not be skipped over: "The Japanese in California", an excellent overview of the historical background of the mass internment; and an Epilogue by Tom C. Clark, retired Supreme Court Justice who in 1942 had served as Civilian Coordinator for the relocation. Among the many glaring deficiencies of our overall educational system and curriculum is "civics". If I were in charge of education in this country, I would want every graduating high school student to have been exposed to perhaps ten books about what it means to be an American, and EXECUTIVE ORDER 9066 might well be one of them. That, of course, is not in the cards, but still the book belongs in every high school and public library (as well as in the private collections of all citizens who take their history and constitutional freedoms seriously).
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by R. M. Peterson on December 18, 2011
Human tragedy
This is the most compassionate documentary about one of the US’s greatest tragedies
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by Stephanie on May 5, 2024
HISTORY
What happened to my husband's family.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by Kathleen Muromoto on June 19, 2019
Didn't learn this in school!
Very informative!
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by Ella Molesworth on April 16, 2019
Five Stars
Informative and worrisome because it could happen again given today's conflicts.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by D. Wachi on May 25, 2017
good product.
Fast service, good product.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars by Yoshinao Nakada on June 27, 2016