Customer Reviews

Jewel of the Desert: Japanese American Internment at Topaz

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Having grown up with friends who were the children or grandchildren of internees at Topaz, and neighbors who may have been there as well, I've wanted to read this book for quite a while. Ms. Taylor has managed to pull together a lot of information from sources that are becoming fewer and fewer, and presents a good history of the struggles and hardships Japanese-Americans (especially those from the San Francisco Bay area) faced during WWII. Some interesting pictures are included, but only a few of them were actually taken at Topaz.

While I appreciated the perspective gained from this book, it felt like it was too long and that some of the information was repeated several times. Also, while it does offer bits and pieces of the experience of internees, it offers little by way of more substantial stories of the individuals, failing to really put a face on the people. The last two chapters give summary information on the post-Topaz lives of several dozen internees, but I wish it had been written into the rest of the book, which could have made it more readable and would have eliminated much of the repetition. I also felt that it failed to adequately comment on the perspective and feelings of the Japanese-Americans (other than vague generalities) regarding certain events of the war, such as the bombing of Pearl Harbor and dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan. In that way it comes across as feeling very academic as opposed to personal. My biggest complaint, however, was with the regular and heavy emphasis (particularly in the beginning) on "caucasion racism," as if no other race was capable or guilty of discriminating another. As such it's a rather myopic view of history, but it's still valuable and interesting when taken with the whole, especially in light of current events and the reactions toward Arab-Americans following the September 11 terrorist attacks.