Storied Lives: Japanese American Students and World War II

Front Cover
University of Washington Press, Oct 1, 2011 - Social Science - 208 pages

During World War II over 5,500 young Japanese Americans left the concentration camps to which they had been confined with their families in order to attend college. Storied Lives describes often in their own words how nisei students found schools to attend outside the West Coast exclusion zone and the efforts of white Americans to help them. The book is concerned with the deeds of white and Japanese Americans in a mutual struggle against racism, and argues that Asian American studies indeed, race relations as a whole will benefit from an understanding not only of racism but also of its opposition, antiracism.

To uncover this little known story, Gary Okihiro surveyed the colleges and universities the nisei attended, collected oral histories from nisei students and student relocation staff members, and examined the records of the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council and other materials.

 

Contents

An Uneventful Life
3
Toward a Better Society
28
Exemplars
49
Yearbook Portraits
73
A Thousand Cranes
98
Antiracism
118
Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund
140
Notes
152
Bibliography
167
Index
175
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Popular passages

Page xi - Because I believe in America, and I trust she believes in me. and because I have received innumerable benefits from her, I pledge myself to do honor to her at all times and...

Bibliographic information