From DiscoverNikkei.org

Contents

Incarceration

Australia

Includes a section on Japanese internees in Australia.
Describes the experience of one Japanese family during internment at the Tatura, Victoria camp during World War II.
Part of the Australian War Memorial's online exhibition, "Australia Under Attack 1942-1943". Brief entry includes historical photographs and artifacts of the Japanese incarcerated in Australia.


Canada

"As Canadian soldiers were fighting overseas in the name of democracy, the federal government was staging the largest mass exodus in Canadian history at home. During the Second World War, roughly 22,000 Japanese Canadians were forcibly evacuated from the west coast and resettled in other parts of the country. Their struggle continued after the war as they fought for an apology and redress for their loss. CBC Television and Radio covered the crucial issues in their journey from relocation to redress."
Includes over twenty video and radio clips from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation archives, related to the Japanese Canadian internment and redress experiences. A special section, "For Teachers," offers classroom activities and assignments for grades 6-12.
"Linda Ohama profiles Irene Tsuyuki, who was interned in the BC interior during the Second World War, repatriated to Japan, but who finally returned to rebuild a life for herself and her family in Surrey, British Columbia."
"Approximately 12,000 Japanese-Canadians were shipped to the Slocan Valley, and were interned in a number of communities, including Greenwood, Salmo, Rosebery, New Denver, Lemon Creek, Slocan City, Kaslo and Sandon. In most of the other communities many small internment shacks were built; Sandon was chosen partly because the number of abandoned buildings that already existed meant less work to prepare the site for the internees."
Section includes information and a slide show on Japanese Canadian internment.
"A portion of the third floor has been restored to the original status circa 1941 thus forming a Museum representing the period of time during WW II when the building was used as an internment center for people of Japanese descent. The Museum displays include artifacts, photographs and story-boards. The focal point of the Museum is a room restored to the original 1941 status depicting living conditions of Japanese-Canadian internees during this period."
"The face of Kaslo also changed when the first of some 1,200 "ghost town" evacuees arrived on the sternwheeler Nasookin in May, 1942. This website attempts to document their contributions to our community and provide us with a window on their way of life 60 years ago in Kaslo."
Includes historical photographs, and a collection of teacher resources.
Plenary presentation at the Canadian Conference on Preventing Crimes Against Humanity: Lessons from the Asia Pacific War (1931-1945), March 21, 2003, Vancouver.
Personal testimony, presented at the Canadian Conference on Preventing Crimes Against Humanity: Lessons from the Asia Pacific War (1931-1945), March 21, 2003, Vancouver.


Latin America

Publisher's description: "Connell uncovers a little known World War II top secret program. The United States demanded that Latin American governments deport--or allow the United States to take--anyone of Japanese ancestry and place them in camps in Texas and New Mexico. The plan was to trade them for American civilians held by the Japanese. Although Peru was the most enthusiastic participant in this program, expelling nearly 5,000 Peruvian citizens of Japanese ancestry, other Latin American countries participated as well. Connell traces the reasons for prejudice and discrimination, the specific programs, and the post-war efforts of those held in American relocation camps to secure restitution. Through the wide use of oral interviews as well as documents, Connell shows the very human side of this effort, which in many ways parallels the discrimination Americans of Japanese ancestry faced during the war."

Mexico

Explores how allied policies affected the Mexican government's reaction to the Axis powers, including the treatment of Axis nationals in Mexico after Mexico entered World War II. Delivered at the 1998 meeting of the Latin American Studies Association on September 24-26, 1998, in Chicago.

Peru

Includes as Section III "The Japanese Peruvian Internment: A Case Study", a richly documented analysis of the kidnapping and incarceration of over 2,200 Japanese Peruvians during World War II.
Abstract: "Natsu Taylor Saito examines how violations of international law and perceptions of non-citizens can reflect and have implications for domestic racial relations. Professor Saito focuses in particular upon the little-known fact that during World War II, the United States kidnapped Japanese Peruvians in order to exchange them for prisoners of war held by the Japanese. She ultimately argues that blindness to the right of citizens abroad will inevitably lead to blindness toward the rights of citizens at home."
Excerpt: "Racism against those of Japanese descent allowed the U.S. government to imprison Japanese Americans during World War II and to contemplate expatriation or deportation plans such as that described by Long. The treatment of U.S. citizens and permanent residents in this manner is consistent with policies that endorse abducting Japanese Latin Americans, bringing them to the United States, and holding them in prison camps. In turn, the ease with which the Japanese Latin Americans could be kidnapped and held hostage made it easier for government officials to justify the internment of Japanese Americans in violation of both international and domestic law, and even to consider stripping them of all rights and deporting them after the war was over."
Personal website developed by an undergraduate at Wake Forest University in 2002, based on the experience of her grandparents being uprooted from Peru and interned at Crystal City, Texas. Upon release they were among the many Peruvian Japanese who relocated to New Jersey, to work for the Seabrook Farms Co.
Adios to Tears is a personal story of a Japanese-Peruvian internee in United States concentration camps. The book documents the little known story of kidnapping, exile and imprisonment of Peruvians of Japanese ancestry, as human pawns for wartime trade.
Materials primarily on Japanese-Peruvian internment in the United States during World War II, collected by Yukio Mochizuki while an undergraduate at CSU Dominguez Hills in the late 1970's.
Excerpt: "It is one of the forgotten tragedies of World War II. Nearly 60 years ago, entire families of Japanese-descended Latin Americans were taken from their homes and, under the guise of protecting "national security interests," shipped to internment camps in the United States. Nearly 2,300 people from 13 countries--80% of them Japanese-Peruvians--were rounded up to wait out the war in the shadow of guard towers and barbed-wire fences."


United States

U.S. Incarceration -- General Resources

U.S. Incarceration -- Resources by Site

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