Nikkei Amerikajin no Taiheiyo senso (Japanese Americans during the Pacific War)

Nikkei Amerikajin no Taiheiyo senso (Japanese Americans during the Pacific war). By Noriko Shimada. (Tokyo: Liber, 1995. xii, 291 pp. Paper, Y2,900, ISBN 4-89798-506-4.) In Japanese.

In Japan, emigrants and their descendents have evoked contradictory emotions and expectations. Works about overseas communities appearing between 1870 and 1945 exhibit various combinations of nationalism, utopianism, and paternalism. Assumptions of solidarity manifested themselves in terminology. All Japanese abroad regardless of birthplace and citizenship were referred to in the official lexicon as "overseas compatriots" and in the popular idiom as "brethren" ("doho," literally "same placenta"). After the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945, these terms were superseded by the less proprietary "nikkei" ("of Japanese ancestry"). Postwar research tended to focus on...