Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community [Hardcover]

David Neiwert (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 12, 2005

Strawberry Days tells the vivid and moving tale of the creation and destruction of a Japanese immigrant community. Before World War II, Bellevue, the now-booming "edge city" on the outskirts of Seattle, was a prosperous farm town renowned for its strawberries. Many of its farmers were recent Japanese immigrants who, despite being rejected by white society, were able to make a living cultivating the rich soil. Yet the lives they created for themselves through years of hard work vanished almost instantly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. David Neiwert combines compelling story-telling with first-hand interviews and newly uncovered documents to weave together the history of this community and the racist schemes that prevented the immigrants from reclaiming their land after the war. Ultimately, Strawberry Days represents more than one community's story, reminding us that bigotry's roots are deeply entwined in the very fiber of American society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Strawberry Days takes an atypical tack...Neiwert's research into Freeman's role in the Japanese expulsion expands our knowledge of this Eastside 'founding father.' That plus an epilogue in which the author eviscerates modern revisionists who would defend the internment and disupute racism as one of causes, are, by themselves, worth the price of this book."--Seattle Weekly

"In the shadow of nearby Microsoft, Boeing and Nintendo of America, Neiwert conjures the ghosts of Japanese American family farms that walk these former fields of Strawberry Days."--David Mas Masumoto, author, Letters to the Valley and Epitaph for a Peach

"With grace and attention to detail, Neiwert mixes personal histories with contemporary documents to tell the poignant story of the Japanese immigrants who built a community on inhospitable soil, saw their farms and families grow, and then were stripped from the land by a climactic act of official injustice. Strawberry Days serves as a telling reminder of the human costs of the wartime removal of Japanese Americans, and a continuing lesson for our own times."--Greg Robinson, author, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans
"David Neiwert's "Strawberry Days" brings the reader face to face with real people and a real community whose lives were shattered by American racism and wartime hysteria. It reminds us that the internment was not just the oppression of a huge ethnic group. It was the oppression of real human beings and their vibrant communities."--Eric Muller, author, Free to Die for their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II

"Neiwert makes a case against internment then, and racial profiling now, arguing that an innocent group of people were victimized by racism and scapegoating in response to the sneak attack. He has a spare and direct style of writing that does not go for the easy emotional buttons, allowing the story unfold in its own quiet manner. But the book is more than bygone history and it deserves a wide readership, especially post-September 11. America's response in 1941 to a racially different group of citizens, has echoes in policing Muslim communities in Detroit, Abu Ghraib prison, the Patriot Act and Guantanamo Bay. It is important to consider the past, and not repeat its mistakes. [A] thoughtful contribution to that discussion."--Tom Carter, Washington Times

"An insightful, well-reasoned analysis of why the internment happened and what its ramifications are."--Kevin Wood, Daily Yomiuri Online

About the Author

David A. Neiwert, an award-winning journalist, is the author of Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crimes in America and In God's Country: The Patriot Movement and the Pacific Northwest. He lives in Seattle.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (May 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140396792X
• ISBN-13: 978-1403967923
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #449,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Bad Side of Government Power Run Amuck, June 29, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Hardcover)

One of the more shameful activities of our Government was the World War II internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. I first learned about these camps many years ago when a friend of mine of Japanese ancestry was talking. As a teenager, he had been put into a camp (just like in this book, his parents were living in the Seattle area) and after a few years he reached draft age and was drafted into the Army from the concentration camp. I would have felt rather angry at a Government that did that to me, but he had accepted it gracefully.

The Army took one look at him and said, 'Japanese interpreter.' He said, 'I'm third generation, I don't speak a word of Japanese.' 'You will.' He did.

The treatment of these people seems to have been a combination of racism, fear, and some feel a desire on the part of some people to get their lands and buildings. No only was there never a proven case of anything at all against these people, there was not even an accusation of problems among the far more Japanese Americans in Hawaii. There was never a suggestion of moving German-Americans or Italian-Americans into camps. My friend's father died in the camp. Two brothers joined the famed 442 Regimental Combat Team, one was wounded and highly decorated, the other was killed in action.

This is a book that reminds us that a real group of people were treated pretty poorly by the rest of us and still retained a sense of well being. Very well done.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A moving and powerful book, July 23, 2005

By 

Jeffrey H. Schultz - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Hardcover)

In light of the September 11 attacks and the recent bombings in London that have provoked talk of interning British Muslims, this is a book people need to read. Racists in America would like nothing better than to destroy the civil rights of our fellow citizens under the giuse of fighting a clear and present danger.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and informative book, September 2, 2005

By 

Writer Chick "puzzlesnthings" (Bellevue, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Strawberry Days: How Internment Destroyed a Japanese American Community (Hardcover)

I have read other books about the internment of Japanese-Americans before, and worried that this book would be dull. However, I found it to be a very interesting and even entertaining read. I too have Japanese-American friends who lived in California and Washington, and were sent to camps, and find it compelling that they don't seem to harbor any bitterness for what they lost, and what was done to them. I don't know that I would be as forgiving.

I would like to comment on a previous reviewer's remark that "There was never a suggestion of moving German-Americans or Italian-Americans into camps." In fact, a suggestion WAS made that Italian-Americans be interred. "Una Storia Segreta : The Secret History of Italian American Evacuation and Internment During World War II" by Sandra Gilbert is an interesting book on the subject.