Japanese American History

Ben Kuroki was a twenty-four-year-old Japanese American farm boy whose heritage was never a problem in remote Nebraska—until Pearl Harbor. Among the millions of Americans who flocked to military stations to enlist, Ben wanted to avenge the attack, reclaim his family honor, and prove his patriotism. But as anti-Japanese sentiment soared, Ben had to fight to be allowed to fight for America. And fight he did.

Behold the Many is the eerily beautiful story of three young sisters, Anah, Aki, and Leah. In 1913, they are sent away from their family for treatment for tuberculosis to an orphanage in Hawaii's Kalihi Valley. Of the three, two will die there, in spite of the nuns' best efforts to save them, and only Anah, the eldest, will grow to adulthood. But the ghosts of the dead children are afraid to leave the grounds of St. Joseph's, which is the only place they have known as home, and as Anah prepares to begin married life away from the orphanage, these ghost children grow angry.

On the Hawaiian island of Molokai, life goes on for the three young Ogata children after the death of their mother and subsequent emotional withdrawal of their grief and guilt-stricken "Poppy". The eldest at 13, Ivah is now responsible for the safety and well-being of tiny Maisie, vulnerable and mute since their mother's passing; and for Blu, her uncontainable brother whose desperate need for love has made him vulnerable to the most insidious of relationships.

From "one of the most original voices on the American literary scene" (The Atlantic Monthly) comes the powerful tale of Sonia Kurisu, a young woman who grew up troubled in working-class Hawaii and struggles to raise her young son alone. Alternating between the present and the past, Yamanaka depicts Sonia's difficult childhood, her addictions to drugs and alcohol, and her string of bad lovers. As she tries to gain control of her life, she is haunted by the ghosts of three children she never had.

Two teens uncover a secret hidden in the Cascade Mountains that spans generations, stringing together family skeletons, lost stories, and a discovery of love and self in this tense and emotional young adult thriller with “great holds, great movement, and a worthwhile finish” (Kirkus Reviews...

“Your husband is a landowner,” they told her. “Food and clothing is so plentiful, it grows on trees.” “You will be able to go to school.” Of the three lies the matchmaker told Willow before she left home as a picture bride in 1918, the third hurt the most. Never one to be deterred, Willow does all that she can to make the best of her unexpected circumstance. But it isn't long before her dreams for this new life are shattered.

You can always count on a crowd outside Heads by Harry, the Yagyuu family's taxidermy shop in Hilo, where the regulars gather every day to drink beer, eat smoked meat, and pontificate into the pau hana hours. But above the shop, where the family lives, life isn't so predictable. Toni Yagyuu, the middle child, has enough on her hands dealing with her budding diva of a little sister. But it is the men in her life that really have her running in circles

It is 1942, and World War II is raging. In the months since Pearl Harbor, the US has plunged into the war overseas—and on the home front, it has locked up tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans in concentration camps, tearing them from their homes on the West Coast with the ostensible goal of neutralizing a supposed internal threat. At each of these camps the government places a white lawyer with contradictory instructions: provide legal counsel to the prisoners, and keep the place running.

From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C. Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account of the “Resettlement”: the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given $25 and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of housing and jobs.

Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military's breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, author Bruce Lee offers a series of fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war.

Two young daredevil flyers confront ugly truths and family secrets during the U.S. internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, from the author of The Other Typist and Three-Martini Lunch. Louis Thorn and Haruto "Harry" Yamada--Eagle and Crane--are the star attractions of Earl Shaw's...

A deeply personal and never-before-told account of one of America's darkest days, from the bestselling author of The Admirals and MacArthur at War. The surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 remains one of the most traumatic events in American history. America's battleship fleet was...

Bold Venture tells the nearly forgotten story of the American airmen who flew perilous combat missions over Hong Kong during the Second World War.

Award-winning poet Brandon Shimoda has crafted a lyrical portrait of his paternal grandfather, Midori Shimoda, whose life - child migrant, talented photographer, suspected enemy alien and spy, desert wanderer, American citizen - mirrors the arc of Japanese America in the 20th century. In a series of pilgrimages, Shimoda records the search to find his grandfather and unfolds, in the process, a moving elegy on memory and forgetting.

The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryuken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation's history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American.

Phillip Harman wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was born with a tennis racquet in his hand. As a young tennis player from California, he goes to Hong Kong for a fundraiser to help the Children of China. While there he falls in love, but Japan takes over Hong Kong and he is tortured and put in prison. Unwilling to die or be broken, he fights to survive and reunite with his new love.

Decades before trade moved between the United States and Japan at its present pace, there was a Japanese immigrant's son with an American dream. Born to a farming tycoon in California, George Aratani was forced to leave the family business behind when incarcerated with more than 100,000 Japanese Americans during World War II. After the war, he traveled to Japan with little idea of what he would import from the war-devastated archipelago. What followed was the development of his two powerful businesses, Mikasa and Kenwood.

In the wake of World War II, the Allied forces charged 28 Japanese men with crimes against humanity. Correspondents at the Tokyo trial thought the evidence fell most heavily on 10 of the accused. In December 1948, five of these defendants were hanged, while four received sentences of life in prison. The tenth was a brilliant philosopher-patriot named Okawa Shumei. His story proved strangest of all. Among all the political and military leaders on trial, Okawa was the lone civilian.

By the time the war ended, the period of internment of Japanese immigrants and citizens, lasting from 1941 to 1945, was considered one of the most unfortunate episodes of American history. In this audiobook, you will learn about the decision to intern Japanese Americans like never before.

Most books gloss over submarines at Midway and, if they are mentioned at all, conclude they failed miserably and had little impact on the outcome of the battle. It is undeniable that carrier aviation and intelligence saved the day, but the role of the submarine was an important one in defense of an anticipated amphibious assault. Midway Submerged is a comprehensive examination of a little-known aspect of this pivotal naval battle, explaining how Nimitz used his submarines at Midway and the Japanese misused theirs based on a flawed tactical plan.