Content area
Full text
Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment. By BRIAN MASARU HAYASHi. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2004. 328 pp. $35.00 (cloth).
Numerous scholars have explored the subject of Japanese internment during World War II, and their explanations for internment have largely focused on domestic factors. Most have neglected the wider, global context that influenced the decision makers and ultimately the internees as well. In this detailed and extensively researched work, Hayashi reexamines Japanese internment by relying on previously unreleased documents and recently declassified material and analyzes both the domestic and international considerations that shaped the decision to incarcerate Japanese in the United States. In addition, Hayashi investigates the significance of internment not just as it affected Japanese Americans but also as it influenced domestic issues such as water rights and land development. Moreover, he discusses how U.S. officials applied the "lessons learned" in educating Japanese Americans in democracy to other peoples abroad. Hayashi brings a fresh perspective to Japanese American internment in an original study that bridges national and international histories to suggest the global relevance of internment.
Hayashi's book encompasses seven chapters that detail the history and the far-reaching consequences of internment. In the first chapter, Hayashi delves into the prewar background of the camp administrators, social scientists, federal government officials, and military officers who administered the internment camps of Manzanar, Poston, and Topaz. Hayashi distinguishes among these four groups and asserts that the...