A respected Japanese American text now back in print
Nothing Left in My Hands is a moving portrait of the lives of early Japanese immigrants in Pajaro Valley, California. Regarded as highly skilled berry growers, the Issei--first-generation Japanese immigrants--were instrumental in the development of strawberry farming in the region. Nakane interviewed those still living in the area in the early 1980s and, in Nothing Left in My Hands, used their own words to narrate their progress in America, from their lives as farmers to the trying periods of anti-immigrant legislation and banishment to internment camps during World War II, and finally to the resumption of their lives after the war.
Kazuko Nakane is an independent art historian and writer currently residing in Seattle. She is a regular contributor to art journals and catalogs of Asian American art. Nothing Left in My Hands: The Issei of a Rural California Town, 1900-1942 began as a history project at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and was first published in 1985.