Title: Days of Infamy: How a Century of Bigotry Led to Japanese American Internment
Author: Lawrence Goldstone
Genre: YA Non-Fiction / History
Publication Date: June 7th, 2022
Publisher: Scholastic Focus
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
“In another unrelenting look at the iniquities of the American justice system, Lawrence Goldstone, acclaimed author of Unpunished Murder, Stolen Justice, and Separate No More, examines the history of racism against Japanese Americans, exploring the territory of citizenship and touching on fears of non-white immigration to the US — with hauntingly contemporary echoes.
On December 7, 1941 — “a date which will live in infamy” — the Japanese navy launched an attack on the American military bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt declared war on Japan, and the US Army officially entered the Second World War.
Three years later, on December 18, 1944, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which enabled the Secretary of War to enforce a mass deportation of more than 100,000 Americans to what government officials themselves called “concentration camps.” None of these citizens had been accused of a real crime. All of them were torn from their homes, jobs, schools, and communities, and deposited in tawdry, makeshift housing behind barbed wire, solely for the crime of being of Japanese descent. President Roosevelt declared this community “alien,” — whether they were citizens or not, native-born or not — accusing them of being potential spies and saboteurs for Japan who deserved to have their Constitutional rights stripped away. In doing so, the president set in motion another date which would live in infamy, the day when the US joined the ranks of those Fascist nations that had forcibly deported innocents solely on the basis of the circumstance of their birth.
In 1944 the US Supreme Court ruled, in Korematsu v. United States, that the forcible deportation and detention of Japanese Americans on the basis of race was a “military necessity.” Today it is widely considered one of the worst Supreme Court decisions of all time. But Korematsu was not an isolated event. In fact, the Court’s racist ruling was the result of a deep-seated anti-Japanese, anti-Asian sentiment running all the way back to the California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s. Starting from this pivotal moment, Constitutional law scholar Lawrence Goldstone will take young readers through the key events of the 19th and 20th centuries leading up to the fundamental injustice of Japanese American internment. Tracing the history of Japanese immigration to America and the growing fear whites had of losing power, Goldstone will raise deeply resonant questions of what makes an American an American, and what it means for the Supreme Court to stand as the “people’s” branch of government.” (Goodreads)
I noticed this book while browsing the new books my library had added to their elibrary. The cover definitely caught my eye as well as the title. So, I borrowed it and here we are!
The book covers a lot of years in history and so sometimes it can feel like a lot, especially because it isn’t written in a unique way but more or less like an essay. This did tend to make it read it at a slower pace, but it was filled with a lot of information that I had never heard/read before. I liked learning as well as seeing how some of the rhetoric that is said today has been around. It’s amazing how that works.
Overall, this was a good read.
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