THE JAPANESE AMERICANS

The Japanese Americans (Major American Immigration)

The Japanese Americans (Major American Immigration)

Summary

The heritage gulf between America and Japan is much discussed in the newspapers; one likely connection between the two cultures, the Japanese-American ethnic assembly, is generally either lumped simultaneously with other Asian-American assemblies or ignored completely. In 1988, assembly drew vigilance to them by voting to reimburse enduring victims of the compelled internment of Japanese Americans of the Pacific Coast in 1942. (Kim 2003)

Discussion

Trying to interpret Japanese Americans' pre-1942 achievement as motor truck farmers and post-World conflict II rebound from the disaster of internment, the authors contend that Japanese immigrants had heritage resources (e.g., a flexible mind-set in the direction of custom, a knack for organizing collectively) that numerous white immigrant groups lacked. Yet it took more than ethnic culture, the authors concede, to lift Japanese Americans into the middle class: economic booms, and an improved international climate, were necessary. (Chin 2006) The crucial difference between the Japanese American experience on the mainland and that in Hawaii is also clarified.

This concise survey neglects some issues. Relations with other non-white assemblies get relatively little attention. No Japanese American famous in any field outside government is mentioned by title; this omission makes the publication less interesting to middle school and high school readers. The Japanese American know-how in literature is disregarded; therefore, the title of Nisei autobiographer Monica Sone seems nowhere in the book. For juvenile readers, Harry Kitano's THE JAPANESE AMERICANS (1987) is better. (Kim 2003)

Yet Fugita and O'Brien do offer the school scholar, the school teacher, and the scholarly investigator an up-to-date survey. The authors heal the years from 1945-1991 more completely than some other anecdotes of Japanese Americans' annals, such as that found in Ronald Takaki's outsiders FROM A distinct seashore; they glimpse, regardless of linguistic ...