Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans - Paperback

by Erica Harth (Author), Erica Harth (Editor)

In a rich and compelling collection, Last Witnesses brings together writers from various cultural backgrounds and personal histories to offer perspectives on one of the great injustices of twentieth-century American history, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

Sixty years after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor and FDR's Executive Order 9066 making possible the incarceration of over 110,000 Americans of Japanese descent (two thirds of them American citizens) one question remains unresolved: "Could it happen again?" To the writers in this book--novelists, memoirists, poets, activists, scholars, students, professionals--the WWII internment of Japanese Americans in the detention camps of the west is an unfinished chapter of American history. Former internees and their children join with others in challenging readers to construct a better future by confronting the past. This is a fresh look at a compelling story, that continues to tarnish the American dream.

Author Biography

Erica Harth is Professor of Humanities and Women's Studies at Brandeis University. She is the author of many publications on early modern France. She spent a year of her childhood at Manzanar, California (one of the relocation centers for Japanese Americans), where her mother was working for the War Relocation Authority.