A true story of Japanese American experience during and after the World War internment.

“A compelling account of the lives of Japanese and Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II . . . instructive and moving.”—Nippon.com From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C. Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account of the “Resettlement”: the relatively unexamined period when ordinary people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during World War II, were finally released from custody. Given twenty-five dollars and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of housing and jobs. Hirahara and Lindquist weave new and archival oral histories into an engaging narrative that illuminates the lives of former internees in the postwar era, both in struggle and unlikely triumph. Readers will appreciate the painstaking efforts that rebuilding required and will feel inspired by the activism that led to redress and restitution—and that built a community that even now speaks out against other racist agendas. “Through this thoughtful story, we see how the harsh realities of the incarceration experience follow real lives, and how Manzanar will sway generations to come. When you finish the last chapter you will demand to read more.”—Gary Mayeda, national president of the Japanese American Citizens League “An engaging, well-written telling of how former Manzanar detainees played key roles in remembering and righting the wrong of the World War II incarceration.”—Tom Ikeda, executive director of Densho

A powerful tale of the Pacific Northwest in the 1950s, reminiscent of To Kill a Mockingbird. Courtroom drama, love story, and war novel, this is the epic tale of a young Japanese-American and the man on trial for killing the man she loves.

This intimate memoir offers a poignant, at times humorous account of Japanese American life in California before and after WWII. In 1942, fourteen-year-old Hank Umemoto gazed out a barrack window at Manzanar Internment Camp, saw the silhouette of Mount Whitney against an indigo sky, and vowed that one day he would climb to the top. Fifty-seven years and a lifetime of stories later, at the age of seventy-one, he reached the summit. As Umemoto wanders through the mountains of California’s Inland Empire, he recalls pieces of his childhood on a grape vineyard in the Sacramento Valley, his time at Manzanar, where beauty and hope were maintained despite the odds, and his later career as proprietor of a printing firm—sharing it all with grace, honesty, and unfailing humor.

Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. —Winner of a 2004 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Award in Literature —Winner of the 2003 Lambda Literary Award —Nominated for an Edgar Award The plot line of Southland is the stuff of a James Ellroy or a Walter Mosley novel . . . But the climax fairly glows with the good-heartedness that Revoyr displays from the very first page. —Los Angeles Times Jackie Ishida’s grandfather had a store in Watts where four boys were killed during the riots in 1965, a mystery she attempts to solve. —New York Times Book Review, included in “Where Noir Lives in the City of Angels” Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American woman, Jackie Ishida, is in her last semester of law school when her grandfather, Frank Sakai, dies unexpectedly. While trying to fulfill a request from his will, Jackie discovers that four black teenagers were killed in the store he ran during the Watts Riots of 1965—and that the murders were never solved or reported. Along with James Lanier, a cousin of one of the victims, she tries to piece together the story of the boys’ deaths. In the process, Jackie unearths the long-held secrets of her family’s history—and her own. Moving in and out of the past, from the shipping yards and internment camps of World War II; to the barley fields of the Crenshaw District in the 1930s; to the means streets of Watts in the 1960s; to the night spots and garment factories of the 1990s, Southland weaves a tale of Los Angeles in all of its faces and forms.

Through the use of rare historic footage and photographs, and personal recollections of a dozen former internees and others, this documentary explores the experiences of more than 10,000 Japanese Americans who were relocated to a remote desert facility during World War II.