Just Americans: How Japanese Americans Won a War at Home and Abroad - Softcover

Asahina, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 159240300X ISBN 13: 9781592403004

Publisher: Gotham, 2007

Synopsis

Selected by the Washington Post Book World as Best Nonfiction of 2006. The moving tale of the most decorated (for its size and length of service) and least known U.S. Army unit of World War II?the Japanese American 442d Regimental Combat Team.

Within months after Pearl Harbor, 110,000 Japanese Americans were forcibly "evacuated" from the West Coast, losing their jobs, their property, and their homes. In less than a year, they were "relocated" and incarcerated in desolate camps throughout the West, Southwest and South. Yet, incredibly, thousands of young men from the camps joined the Army, to defend the country that had denied them their rights.

This is the dramatic story of the segregated Japanese American 100th Battalion/442d Regimental Combat Team?and what its soldiers did to affirm their full citizenship. During the fall of 1944, the combat team made headlines when it rescued the "lost battalion" of the 36th "Texas" Division. And while the soldiers of the 100th/442d were sacrificing their lives in Europe, the Roosevelt administration was debating whether to close the camps, and whether military necessity had truly justified the "relocation." Just Americans tells the story of soldiers in combat who were fighting a greater battle at home. As Gen. Jacob L. Devers put it, in World War II the soldiers of the 100th/442d had "more than earned the right to be called just Americans, not Japanese Americans."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Praise for Just Americans:

"Bob Asahina's wonderful book more than does justice to the history of the 442d and the brave men who wore its patch and called it home. Just Americans will be news to many, and for that reason, if for no other, I hope it becomes required reading in high school and college history courses. I pray that the stories he tells become known far and wide, so that the ‘mistakes’ of our lamentable past may be less likely to be repeated."
—Lucian K. Truscott IV, author of Dress Gray and Heart of War

"Many a survivor of that bitter 1944-45 winter of WWII will be happy to see the men of the 100th Battalion/442d Regimental Combat Team getting their bravery recognized. They became a legend among in the infantry units fighting in the Vosges Mountains."
—Tony Hillerman, veteran of C Company, 410th Infantry, and best-selling author of the Joe Leaphorn/Jim Chee mysteries

"Just Americans is a wonderful account of a heroic wonder — people who gave everything for a country that seemed intent on taking everything away from them. If citizenship is earned, here are the Americans who most deserve their pay. If citizenship is bequeathed, here is freedom’s greatest legacy. If citizenship is a blessing, here are the patriot saints."
—P.J. O’Rourke, author of Peace Kills and Give War a Chance

"It was with American enthusiasm and Japanese tenacity that Japanese Americans overcame both persecution and resentment to fight most bravely on European battlefields in 1944-45, and Robert Asahina too needed both enthusiasm and tenacity to recover for history their doings and undoings. While adding to scholarship, the rich detail here masterfully presented makes for exciting reading."
—Edward N. Luttwak, historian, author of Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, and Senior Adviser to The Center for Strategic & International Studies

About the Author:

Robert Asahina has been an editor at George, Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, GEO, The Public Interest, and The New York Sun. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Art International, Yale Theater, the Los Angeles Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and other periodicals. He is a former President and Publisher of the Adult Publishing Group of Golden Books Family Entertainment, Senior Vice President, Deputy Publisher, and Editor in Chief of Broadway Books, and Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster. He is now president of Asahina and Wallace, a Los Angeles-based independent publisher of fiction and nonfiction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Gotham
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 159240300X
• ISBN 13: 9781592403004
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 339