Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II

by Richard Reeves

Overview

A LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE • Bestselling author Richard Reeves provides an authoritative account of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans and Japanese aliens during World War II

“Highly readable . . . [A] vivid and instructive reminder of what war and fear can do to civilized people.” —Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed an executive order that forced more than 120,000 Japanese Americans into primitive camps for the rest of war. Their only crime: looking like the enemy.

In Infamy, acclaimed historian Richard Reeves delivers a sweeping narrative of this atrocity. Men we usually consider heroes—FDR, Earl Warren, Edward R. Murrow—were in this case villains. We also learn of internees who joined the military to fight for the country that had imprisoned their families, even as others fought for their rights all the way to the Supreme Court. The heart of the book, however, tells the poignant stories of those who endured years in “war relocation camps,” many of whom suffered this injustice with remarkable grace.

Racism and war hysteria led to one of the darkest episodes in American history. But by recovering the past, Infamy has given voice to those who ultimately helped the nation better understand the true meaning of patriotism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250081681
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	648,014
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Richard Reeves, the bestselling author of such books as President Kennedy: Profile in Power, is an award-winning journalist who has worked for The New York Times, written for The New Yorker, and served as chief correspondent for Frontline on PBS. Currently the senior lecturer at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, he lives in Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941

2. By Order of the President
Signing of Executive Order 9066:
February 19, 1942

3. Only What They Could Carry
Public Proclamation Number 1:
March 2, 1942

4. "Keep This a White Man's Country"
The Opening of the Concentration Camps:
March 22 to October 6, 1942

5. A Desert Christmas
December 25, 1942

6. Uncle Sam, Finally, Wants You
Nisei Enlistment:
January 29, 1943

7. "loyals" and "disloyals"
Tule Lake:
September 1943

8. "Is That the American Way?"
Heart Mountain Draft Resistance:
February 1944

9. "Go for Broke"
The Lost Battalion:
October 30, 1944

10. Going "Home"
V-J Day:
August 15, 1945

Epilogue

Biographical Notes
Notes
Bibliography 315
Acknowledgments 323
Index 327

Editorial Reviews

A Los Angeles Times Bestseller

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

“A compulsively readable, emotionally rich and passionately written account of the internment of 120,000 American Japanese in concentration camps during World War II.... Reeves' excellent Infamy, the first popular, general history of the subject in more than 25 years, reminds us that not only can it happen here, it did.... Every reader who has lived the post-9/11 era will immediately notice the parallels.”—Los Angeles Times

“Highly readable.... The story of this national disgrace, long buried...still has the power to shock. [Infamy is a] vivid and instructive reminder of what war and fear can do to civilized people.” —Evan Thomas, The New York Times Book Review

“History's judgment is that internment...was wrong. Mr. Reeves's excellent book gives us an opportunity to learn from past mistakes.... Reeves is especially good at bringing to life the social experience of internment.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Richard Reeves's book on the harsh, prolonged and unjustified internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is a detailed account of a painful and shameful period in modern American history. Infamy combines Reeves's journalist's training with his historian's eye to give us a page-turner on how hysteria at the highest levels can shatter our most fundamental rights. Brace yourself and read this very important book.” —Tom Brokaw, author of The Greatest Generation

“For years, the unjust relocation and incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast during World War II - the majority of them American citizens - was shrouded in shame and secrecy.... [Infamy's] greatest strength is probably Reeves's masterful use of anecdotes, which enliven an epic story with poignant tales of individual hardship, courage, and endurance.” —The Boston Globe

“Infamy tells the story of why and how the American government—with the full support of its citizenry—illegally interned Japanese-Americans. Richard Reeves even-handedly examines this dangerous precedent-setting time when the Constitution was trampled by misinformation, prejudice, and fear. Today as Muslim and Hispanic immigrants are being blamed for America's ills, Infamy is a timely and important read.” —James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirage

“In Infamy, journalist Richard Reeves...provides a sweeping and searching account of this appalling chapter in the history of the United States.... Reeves reserves the heart of his book — and rightfully so — for a narrative of the heartbreaking experiences of evacuated individuals and families.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Infamy...is perhaps the most thorough history of the relocation to date.” —The Denver Post

“More than 120,000 Japanese-Americans were locked up during World War II...[and Infamy] tells their tale with energy, compassion and moral outrage.... With meticulous care [Reeves documents] the decisions made in Washington by the world's most powerful men, and how those decisions affected the lives of ordinary Americans whose only crime was to be of Japanese descent.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“The forced relocation and internment of [Japanese Americans during WWII] was a racially based insult to our purported ideals. Reeves, an award-winning journalist, recounts the unfolding of this outrage with a justifiable sense of moral indignation…. This is a painful but necessary and timely reminder of how overblown fears about national security can have shameful consequences.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Reeves provides unsparing criticism about the racist whirlwind of anti-Japanese feeling fanned by the Roosevelt White House, Congress, state and local governments, and leading media figures ... The testimonies of the uprooted Japanese-Americans, many of whom remained patriotic even as they were forced into the camps, are heartbreaking, courageous, and ironic in light of those who fought valiantly alongside American soldiers while their relatives remained locked away. Reeves's chilling exposé takes a deeper look at one of America's darkest chapters.” —Publishers Weekly

“An engaging and comprehensive depiction of an essential, but sometimes overlooked, era of U.S. history… Reeves unearths and makes public a painful national memory, but he does so while maintaining the dignity of those held behind barbed wire and unmasking the callous racism and disregard of the people who put them there.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Essential... Reeves mixes intimate narratives with historical documents to give an authoritative account of one of the darkest periods in American history.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher

02/16/2015
Reeves (Portrait of Camelot) examines the key causes and dire consequences of the Japanese-American internment in relocation camps during WWII, concentrating on a shortsighted military strategy and anti-Japanese sentiment following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. The psychological blow delivered by Tojo’s warplanes at the principal U.S. Navy base in Hawaii sent the country reeling and put America on a combat footing, both in the Pacific and domestically. In February 1942, F.D.R. issued Executive Order 9066, which declared parts of the American West military zones and opened the way for the removal of American citizens of Japanese descent to government camps. Reeves provides unsparing criticism about the racist whirlwind of anti- Japanese feeling fanned by the Roosevelt White House, Congress, state and local governments, and leading media figures such as William Randolph Hearst, Walter Lippmann, and Edward R. Murrow. The testimonies of the uprooted Japanese-Americans, many of whom remained patriotic even as they were forced into the camps, are heartbreaking, courageous, and ironic in light of those who fought valiantly alongside American soldiers while their relatives remained locked away. Reeves’s chilling exposé takes a deeper look at one of America’s darkest chapters. Photos. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Infamy tells the story of why and how the American government--with the full support of its citizenry--illegally interned Japanese-Americans. Richard Reeves even-handedly examines this dangerous precedent-setting time when the Constitution was trampled by misinformation, prejudice, and fear.?Today as Muslim and Hispanic immigrants are being blamed for America's ills, Infamy is a timely and important read.

author of Flags of Our Fathers and The China Mirag James Bradley

02/15/2015
The bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces led America into World War II. It also resulted in several generations of Japanese Americans being removed from their homes and placed into guarded concentration camps. It took 30 years for survivors to start telling their tales of life behind barbed wires. (Congress would not create a commission to investigate the camps until 1980.) Reeves (President Kennedy: Profile of Power) does an admirable job of providing a detailed history of life within these American camps. This book not only relates the accounts of daily life in the war-relocation camps, it also traces how men such as Franklin Roosevelt and Earl Warren came to the decision to imprison citizens. The author looks beyond the walls of the camps to describe the experiences of the internees who joined the military and became some of the most decorated soldiers in the European theater. VERDICT While there have been several personal histories about the internment camps, including Looking Like the Enemy by Mary Matsuda Gruenewald and Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne and James Houston, Reeves mixes intimate narratives with historical documents to give an authoritative account of one of the darkest periods in American history. Essential for all libraries.—John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston

Library Journal

2014-12-21
Former Frontline journalist Reeves (Portrait of Camelot: A Thousand Days in the Kennedy White House, 2010, etc.) brings his reporting chops to this history of America's less-publicized response to the Pearl Harbor bombings.The author brings a host of points of view to the story of the internment of more than 120,000 Japanese-Americans in the early 1940s, which was initiated by Franklin Roosevelt. Reeves liberally quotes politicians, reporters and citizens, rehashing the argument that "a Jap is a Jap" and therefore all Japanese aliens and even citizens on the West Coast needed to be removed. Reeves includes firsthand and secondhand accounts of life inside the camps. In addition to chronicling the poor living conditions, he also explores the details that made them livable—e.g., Boy Scout troops, high school dances and mail-order deliveries. Though Reeves' subject is an essentially bleak picture of hysterical racism, for the most part, the author does a solid job of balancing the dreary passages with occasional shots of humor, humanity or both. Neighbors who protected and managed Japanese-American family assets in preparation for their returns, college students who asserted that "the average intelligence of people in the United States was that of a high grade moron," and returning veterans who demanded better treatment of their comrades all serve as much-needed breaks from the norm of the day. Reeves unearths and makes public a painful national memory, but he does so while maintaining the dignity of those held behind barbed wire and unmasking the callous racism and disregard of the people who put them there. The author even allows for growth in his villains, giving credit when they later changed their positions. A few instances of repetition and the dark subject matter only occasionally slow the narrative. An engaging and comprehensive depiction of an essential, but sometimes-overlooked, era of U.S. history.

Kirkus Reviews