Customer Reviews

Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II (Chicago Series in Law and Society)

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The Japanese American draft resisters responded to Pearl Harbor not with an ultra-nationalism for the America that had treated them and their families so unjustly, but with a principled insistence on America's higher ideals. By vindicating that choice, Professor Muller's work helps to preserve for all of us the same choice of responses in the wake of 9/11. For many Americans, especially Asian Americans and Arab Americans, waving the flag today combines and conflates a message of patriotism with a historically well-founded fear that we will be counted as less than fully American when America, the one and only nation we love and call home, faces a time of crisis. In the face of these conflated meanings, it is only with a free conscience that an American can ever hope to invest a choice to dedicate his life to his country with the meaning he intends. The resisters remind us that in a time of national crisis, the freedom of conscience is the most precious freedom of all.

This is a group our history books will never cover: Interned Japanese-American citizens who resisted the draft. This book also covers details like their interactions with Black folks and Conscientious Objectors (mostly Quakers) once they were imprisoned.

The chapter on continuing tension within the Japanese community relating to how to treat the resisters is also valuable. It's no exaggeration to say this book contains information the average person will find nowhere else.

With the civil liberties of persons of Arab ancestry under attack in the wake of Sept. 11, this book could not have been published at a better time. Professor Muller has written a rare book, carefully researched and thoroughly readable, judicious and balanced without shying away from tough criticism. Free to Die for Their Country is an engaging story artfully told, and I highly recommend it.

One of the most interesting themes running throughout the book is the tension between the law and justice. Reading this book, I was reminded of a Thoreau quotation that I read before I went to law school: "It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right." As Muller explains, the legal position of the draft resisters was tenuous, while their moral position was compelling. In such a situation, what is a good citizen to do? And what is a good judge to do, faced with citizens accused of breaking the law? These are important questions, and this book offers an interesting new lens through which to consider them.

I have only two criticisms. First, Muller's judgment of Judge Blake Kennedy (one of the trial judges who convicted the resisters for draft evasion) as an 'anti-Semite, a racist, and a xenophobe' struck me as unduly harsh in light of the rather thin evidence Muller presented. Second, Muller's efforts early in the book to paint the resisters as loyal Americans seemed more a reflection of his thesis than a conclusion drawn from his research.

But these are quibbles. Free to Die for Their Country is a wonderful book that I have found myself rolling around in my mind long after I finished it.

We know about the 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage who were imprisoned and interned in ten concentration camps in the USA during WWII "By Order of President" Roosevelt and the Army, in places like Tule Lake, Heart Mountain, and Minidoka. We know about the young men, the Nisei, who served their country with distinction in the 100th Battalion and 442nd regimental combat team in Italy and Europe, while their families were stripped of their civil rights and property. But what about those young men who resisted their draft order since they had no civil rights? What of those who were imprisoned and never pardoned after the war? In hindsight, weren't they just as courageous? What about the courage of Federal Judge Louis Goodman? The author of this book, himself the son of a refugee, the grandson of a man who was sent briefly to Buchenwald from Frankfurt, and was tagged an enemy alien in the USA, has written this excellent, well researched book that will be an excellent resource to students of U.S. history and the fight for civil liberties.

I was utterly amazed when I first learned that the U.S. drafted some of the very same Japanese-American men that the government interned on suspicion of disloyalty during World War II. I was further amazed when I learned that the government criminally prosecuted those among them who resisted the draft. This book tells this incredible story with balance, grace, and insight. The pages pull you along as you quickly get wrapped up in the lives of the resisters and those in the government and in their own ethnic community who opposed them. The highpoint of the book for me was Muller's account of the one resisters' trial that did not result in convictions. A lone federal district court judge bucked the government and dismissed the charges on the grounds that they offended basic notions of due process. This last story is a "profile in courage" particularly appropriate to our current circumstances. Read this book.

I heard about this book in a seminar in Seattle on Japanese-American internees during WWII. I immediately wanted to get it. Some hint about Japanese-American CO's, who were imprisoned just near Seattle, along with Quakers? I had to find out!

This is a well researched book, copiously footnoted, with extensive primary and secondary sources. Better yet, Muller is a good author. Don't always get that with a good research non-fiction work. He had me interested, wanting to find out more, hating to put the book down. Muller doesn't simply come off as a bleeding-heart- he dispassionately relates the experiences of the Japanese-Americans, and critiques their actions, with both positive and negative assessments. Yet he manages to bring out in the end how atrocious the actions were of our government- to take people, strip them of their rights, deny them their basic rights as citizens, and then call them to kill others, on the basis that they *are* citizens. He tells the story of how they came to be in the camps, how the decisions were made to put them in the draft (assisted greatly by the JACO, 2nd generation Japanese who were willing to sell out their own people in order to gain more respect from the American government), how and why some chose to resist, and the long struggle that came from the results of those actions, leading up to the present day.

There was one most excellent quote in the book. One judge, after the internment camps are disbanded, writes how the constitution should guarantee basic rights to everyone in our land- regardless of if they are citizens or not. The parallels between the experiences of the Japanese-Americans in WWII and those of another ethnicity today are chilling.

This is a very well-written and tremendously interesting book about a very murky period in our national history. With all the focus on issues of patriotism in wartime and allegiances of immigrant communities, it is indeed interesting to look back at how we treated Japanese-Americans during WWII. I cannot think of a more timely treatment of these issues. The book tells the story well, and even though written by a law professor and published by an academic press, it reads like a novel. The author has truly given voice to the detainees in the internment camps, and I bet those who are still alive are glad to have their story told in such a compelling manner.

I first read this book shortly after it was first published. I recently accompanied by now 87 year old Mother to the Cody / Powell region of Wyoming and had the occasion to read it again. As the son of a WWII Nisei veteran who volunteered out of the Heart Mountain relocation camp, I have always believed the Japanese American men who volunteered for the Army were the true heroes who reclaimed the reputation of the Japanese community as good Americans; and I still believe that today. Eric Muller's detailed recounting of the Nisei draft resisters saga offers a different perspective that is well worth the effort. The thought that the US government would incarcerate an entire ethnic community without due process of law, then subject the young men of that community to compulsory military service is an irony some young Nisei, as a matter of conscience, chose to resist. What Muller fails to mention is the thuggery practiced by the resisters and their supporters to discourage the young men who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the 100th Artillery and the MIS. My grandfather was threatened with physical harm by a group of these thugs who cornered him the the latrine when it was rumored his sons would volunteer. The animosity between the Nisei Vets and the resisters exists to this day and was apparent in some of the family groupings at the banquet celebrating the opening of the new Interpretive Learning Center at Heart Mountain in August of 2011. I learned much from Muller's efforts, the sort of stuff my parents were still too hurt and wounded from the relocation experience to share with me.

Like Mr. Muller, I had always assumed that all of the Japanese-American soldiers in WWII were volunteers. I was shocked and saddened to discover that after the government insinuated that not only Japanese immigrants but native born Americans of Japanese descent were not "truly" American; the same people would force them to fight for the country that had so wholly ignored their rights not only as citizens but as humans.

There is a definite sympathetic tone throughout the whole book that some people might call "slanted," but I have yet to read a book about historical accounts that does not spend the majority of it's time supporting the author's views.

However, any reader worried the author's passion may contaminate the authenticity of this book should rest assured that it is written in a professional manner. The only point in this book that displays Mr. Muller's personal feelings is a brief forward. Otherwise the book is written purely from the internee's points of view, most especially those who later resisted the draft. All of the author's research -- including quotes and many of the Japanese-American's personal feelings -- are documented in an extensive bibliography.

My only complaint about this book is that the author continuously refers to the different Japanese-American generations by the terms common to that period.(i.e. "Nisei" was a referral to native born citizens and their immigrant parents were called "Issei.") Not only were the many terms confusing, but I found the action pointless, and offensive.

If you are interested in the biography of Japanese-Americans, WWII, or history in general this book is worth reading.

This book is typical of the many modern historical re-interpretations of the evacuation and relocation of the people of Japanese ancestry during WWII.

Prominent features among these writers is that the centers were prisons, surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards with guns pointed at the inhabitants who were living under horrendously grim conditions of "incarceration" only because they happened to be of the Japanese race. Muller states their plight "among this country's most shameful and egregious human rights violations."

The main premises of the book are as follows:

1. The Nisei draft resisters were just as "patriotic and courageous" as their fellow Nisei among the 100th and 442nd who died or were wounded.

2. The Japanese American Citizens League was against these resisters when they should have supported them. The JACL has since supposedly accepted them.

3. The resisters proved the inconsistency -- indeed, the injustice -- of the US Government's policy regarding their evacuation and relocation.

4. The loyalty questionnaire was unnecessary and therefore harmed relationships and caused divisions.

5. The US Govt. and WRA were wrong to draft the Nisei who were "imprisoned" in "internment camps."

6. The resisters may have been right, they may have been wrong. At any rate, everyone needs to be OK about it and no more hard feelings, please.

If you are a member of or a veteran of the US armed forces, this book will definitely anger you. No doubt it has angered many Japanese Americans.