Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence

Nisei Soldiers Break Their Silence is a compelling story of courage, community, endurance, and reparation. It shares the experiences of Japanese Americans (Nisei) who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, fighting on the front lines in Italy and France, serving as linguists in the South Pacific, and working as cooks and medics. The soldiers were from Hood River, Oregon, where their families were landowners and fruit growers. Town leaders, including veterans' groups, attempted to prevent their return after the war and stripped their names from the local war memorial. All of the soldiers were American citizens, but their parents were Japanese immigrants and had been imprisoned in camps as a consequence of Executive Order 9066. The racist homecoming that the Hood River Japanese American soldiers received was decried across the nation.

Linda Tamura, who grew up in Hood River and whose father was a veteran of the war, conducted extensive oral histories with the veterans, their families, and members of the community. She had access to hundreds of recently uncovered letters and documents from private files of a local veterans' group that led the campaign against the Japanese American soldiers. This book also includes the little known story of local Nisei veterans who spent 40 years appealing their convictions for insubordination.

Watch the book trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHMcFdmixLk

Linda Tamura is professor of education at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She is the author of The Hood River Issei: An Oral History of Japanese Settlers in Oregon's Hood River Valley.

Preface

Acknowledgments

Oral History Methodology

Introduction

Part 1 | Early Years

1. “Growing Up in Two Worlds” | Balancing Japanese America

2. “Nice People So Long as They Are in a Minority” | The Japanese American Community in Hood River

Part 2 | World War II

3. “Why Didn’t You Tell Us the War Was Coming?” | Community Fallout from Pearl Harbor

4. “Fighting for Good Uncle Sam” | Nisei Enter the Military

5. “The Two-Sided Sword” | Wartime Changes for Japanese American Families

6. “Getting Shot from Ahead of Us and Behind Us” | War in the South Pacific

7. “From Somewhere in Europe” | War Europe

8. “I’ve Got a Lot of Fighting to Do Right Here” | Charged with Willful Disobedience

9. “Discard My Uniform for Good” | The End of the War

Part 3 | After the War

10. “No Japes Wanted in Hood River” | The Hood River Situation

11. “Ninety Percent Are Against the Japs!” | Veterans and Their Families Return

12. “You Could Feel It” | Resettling in the Community and Elsewhere

13. “Time is a Good Healer” | Rebuilding

14. “Guilty of Courage” | Discipline Barrack Boys’ Appeals

Part 4 | Today

15. “Opening the Closets of History” | The Community Today

16. No “Ordinary Soldiers” | The Patriot Test

Afterword

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index