Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment During World War II

by Tetsuden Kashima

Overview

2004 Washington State Book Award Finalist

Judgment without Trial reveals that long before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government began making plans for the eventual internment and later incarceration of the Japanese American population. Tetsuden Kashima uses newly obtained records to trace this process back to the 1920s, when a nascent imprisonment organization was developed to prepare for a possible war with Japan, and follows it in detail through the war years.

Along with coverage of the well-known incarceration camps, the author discusses the less familiar and very different experiences of people of Japanese descent in the Justice and War Departments’ internment camps that held internees from the continental U.S. and from Alaska, Hawaii, and Latin America. Utilizing extracts from diaries, contemporary sources, official communications, and interviews, Kashima brings an array of personalities to life on the pages of his book — those whose unbiased assessments of America’s Japanese ancestry population were discounted or ignored, those whose works and actions were based on misinformed fears and racial animosities, those who tried to remedy the inequities of the system, and, by no means least, the prisoners themselves.

Kashima’s interest in this episode began with his own unanswered questions about his father’s wartime experiences. From this very personal motivation, he has produced a panoramic and detailed picture — without rhetoric and emotionalism and supported at every step by documented fact — of a government that failed to protect a group of people for whom it had forcibly assumed total responsibility.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295984513
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	10/01/2004
Series:	Scott and Laurie Oki Series in Asian American Studies Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tetsuden Kashima is professor of American ethnic studies at the University of Washington.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

1. The Imprisonment Process

2. Pre-World War II Preparations

3. The Internment Process of the Justice and War Departments

4. The Territory of Hawaii

5. The Territory of Alaska and Latin America

6. Justice Department and Army Camps

7. The Arbitrary Process of Control

8. Segregation Centers and Other Camps

9. Abuses, Protests, and the Geneva Convention

10. Imprisonment and Stigma

Notes

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Arthur A. Hansen

Tetsuden Kashima has fashioned a work that is accessible, absorbing, measured, and suffused with significance. The culmination of years of painstaking and conscientious research and writing, this estimable book is seminal within an already crowded field of study, not merely for what it covers in the way of new data but rather because it situates the subject of the Japanese American Evacuation [JAE] into an analytical framework that is both larger and more meaningful than that extant. It ushers in a new paradigm for the scholarly study and public understanding of the JAE.

Stanford M. Lyman

The materials contained in this book are extraordinarily valuable. The author, using documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, has uncovered a heretofore hidden dimension of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. His theory of the ‘bureaucracy of incarceration’ guides the reader through the maze of agencies and personnel who established and maintained thousands of Japanese from 1941 to 1945 and beyond.... As a contribution to Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and the sociology of organization, this study is likely to be hailed as a landmark.

From the Publisher

"The materials contained in this book are extraordinarily valuable. The author, using documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, has uncovered a heretofore hidden dimension of the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. His theory of the ‘bureaucracy of incarceration’ guides the reader through the maze of agencies and personnel who established and maintained thousands of Japanese from 1941 to 1945 and beyond. . . . As a contribution to Asian American studies, ethnic studies, and the sociology of organization, this study is likely to be hailed as a landmark."—Stanford M. Lyman, Morrow Eminent Scholar and Professor of Social Science, Florida Atlantic University

"Tetsuden Kashima has fashioned a work that is accessible, absorbing, measured, and suffused with significance. The culmination of years of painstaking and conscientious research and writing, this estimable book is seminal within an already crowded field of study, not merely for what it covers in the way of new data but rather because it situates the subject of the Japanese American Evacuation [JAE] into an analytical framework that is both larger and more meaningful than that extant. It ushers in a new paradigm for the scholarly study and public understanding of the JAE."—Arthur A. Hansen, California State University, Fullerton, and Japanese American National Museum

Editorial Reviews

"Kashima's much-needed and well-received volume examines, in well-documented details, the complex, and often insidious, military and governmental bureaucratic jostling for power and position, and the decision-making process that forced thousands—17,477—of Japanese Americans to be imprisoned.."

Journal of the West

"This book lucidly delineates the complicated history of these camps that held Japanese Americans, alien Italians and Germans, and Latin American Japanese. . . . Judgment Without Trial, by telling how it happened 60 odd years ago, reminds us of the government’s ability to harm people by subverting the liberties Americans hold dear."

International Examiner

"Readers familiar with the literature on the imprisonment will appreciate both Kashima’s painstaking research and his ambitious effort to describe the imprisonment in all its dimensions. Judgment Without Trial proves that the imprisonment was not an act of wartime hysteria. Instead, it was thoroughly planned. . . . Kashima’s book also makes clear that Nikkei had to confront—usually without legal counsel—a bewildering array of federal agencies in their efforts to secure their rights."

Western Historical Quarterly

Kashima's much-needed and well-received volume examines, in well-documented details, the complex, and often insidious, military and governmental bureaucratic jostling for power and position, and the decision-making process that forced thousands--17,477--of Japanese Americans to be imprisoned..

-- "Journal of the West"

Readers familiar with the literature on the imprisonment will appreciate both Kashima's painstaking research and his ambitious effort to describe the imprisonment in all its dimensions. Judgment Without Trial proves that the imprisonment was not an act of wartime hysteria. Instead, it was thoroughly planned. . . . Kashima's book also makes clear that Nikkei had to confront--usually without legal counsel--a bewildering array of federal agencies in their efforts to secure their rights.

-- "Western Historical Quarterly"

This book lucidly delineates the complicated history of these camps that held Japanese Americans, alien Italians and Germans, and Latin American Japanese. . . . Judgment Without Trial, by telling how it happened 60 odd years ago, reminds us of the government's ability to harm people by subverting the liberties Americans hold dear.

-- "International Examiner"

This dense scholarly exploration of the experiences of World War II internees, and in particular of the directives and procedures that governed the internment process, is of particular interest because, unlike many books on the subject, it contains a detailed study of the process as it occurred outside the contiguous United States.

-- "Advertiser"

This is a rich, meticulously researched, and vitally important book. Combining what might be called standard political history with social history and case studies, he explains, in considerable detail, the administrative process for determining who would be relocated and where and the operations of the federal agencies responsible for turning these plans into reality. . . . Kashima's prodigious research and well-honed arguments speak for themselves--and speak to recent developments and the question of when justice for all is justice only for some.

-- "Pacific Northwest Quarterly"

From the Publisher

This is a rich, meticulously researched, and vitally important book. Combining what might be called standard political history with social history and case studies, he explains, in considerable detail, the administrative process for determining who would be relocated and where and the operations of the federal agencies responsible for turning these plans into reality.... Kashima’s prodigious research and well-honed arguments speak for themselves—and speak to recent developments and the question of when justice for all is justice only for some.

Pacific Northwest Quarterly

This dense scholarly exploration of the experiences of World War II internees, and in particular of the directives and procedures that governed the internment process, is of particular interest because, unlike many books on the subject, it contains a detailed study of the process as it occurred outside the contiguous United States.

Advertiser