Prisoners Without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II

by Roger Daniels

Overview

Well established on college reading lists, Prisoners Without Trial presents a concise introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. With a new preface, a new epilogue, and expanded recommended readings, Roger Daniels's updated edition examines a tragic event in our nation's past and thoughtfully asks if it could happen again.

"[A] concise, deft introduction to a shameful chapter in American history: the incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II." -- Publishers Weekly

"More proof that good things can come in small packages... [Daniels] tackle[s] historical issues whose consequences reverberate today. Not only [does he] offer cogent overviews of [the] issues, but [he] is willing to climb out on a critical limb... for instance, writing about the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during WW II... 'this book has tried to explain how and why the outrage happened. That is the role of the historian and his book, which is to analyze the past. But this historian feels that analyzing the past is not always enough' -- and so he takes on the question of 'could it happen again?' and concludes that there's 'an American propensity to react against "foreigners" in the United States during times of external crisis, especially when those "foreigners" have dark skins,' and that Japanese-Americans, at least, 'would argue that what has happened before can surely happen again.'" -- Kirkus Reviews

"An outstanding resource that provides a clear and concise history of the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II." -- Alice Yang Murray, University of California, Santa Cruz

"Especially in light of the events following September 11, 2001, Roger Daniels has done us a great favor. In a slender book, he tells, with the assurance of a master narrator, an immense story we -- all of us -- ignore at the peril of our freedoms." -- Gary Y. Okihiro, Columbia University

"No book could be more timely. How, as a different immigrant minority is under racial pressure associated with a feared enemy, the updated Prisoners Without Trial helps us see clearly what lessons we may draw from the past." -- Paul Spickard, author of Japanese Americans

"In the epilogue to the first edition of Prisoners without Trial, Roger Daniels thoughtfully asked, 'Could it happen again?' Today, in post-9/11 America, that question has an answer: It can and it has. Daniels addresses these issues in a revised edition of this classic, and he finds the U.S. government perilously close to repeating with the Arab American population mistakes it made with the Japanese Americans." -- Johanna Miller Lewis, University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Product Details

BN ID:	2940157571955
Publisher:	Plunkett Lake Press
Publication date:	05/15/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	464,138
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft Professor Emeritus of the University of Cincinnati, has written widely about immigration, race and ethnicity in American history with a special emphasis on Japanese Americans. He has also been active in public affairs, most prominently as a member of the history committee which helped plan the immigration museum on Ellis Island and as historical consultant to the Presidential Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians. His most recent publications are The Japanese American Cases and his two-volume biography, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Road to the New Deal, 1882-1939 and The War Years, 1939-1945.

Daniels earned his Ph.D. at UCLA in 1961, after serving in the merchant marine during WW II, in the Army during the Korean War, and briefly as a journalist. He taught at Wisconsin State University, Platteville, UCLA, the University of Wyoming, and SUNY, Fredonia before coming to the University of Cincinnati as professor and head of the History Department in 1976. In 1994 he was named Charles Phelps Taft Professor of History, and took emeritus status in 2002. He had Fulbright and other visiting professorships at four European and two Canadian Universities and has lectured widely in North America, Europe, and Asia.