Library Class and Subject Guides: 2016 Common Read / When the Emperor Was Divine: Related Books

2016 Common Read Selection

Meet the Author
An Evening with Julie Otsuka, on October 19, 7 - 9 pm. Julie will discuss her award winning book in the Centennial Student Union ballroom.

Upcoming Events:

September 7-30
Come check out the latest art exhibit in the Centennial Student Union Art Gallery (lower level near Hearth Lounge) and fold your own origami peace crane. Cranes will be available for viewing after the campus-wide installations.

September 24 11 am - 12:30 pm
Family Week Book Discussion. Families are welcome to join Honors students in Memorial Library (second floor) to assembly peace cranes and engage in a discussion about When the Emperor Was Divine.

Books related to Japanese American Internment Camps

From Concentration Camp to Campus by Allan W. Austin
Call Number: D769.8.A6 A94 2004
Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the incarceration of thousands of Japanese Americans, the National Japanese American Student Relocation Council was born. This agency was created to facilitate the movement of Japanese American college students from concentration camps to colleges away from the West Coast and helped more than four thousand incarcerated students pursue higher education during WWII. This author examines the Council's work and the challenges it faced and reveals the voices of students as they worked to construct their own meaning for wartime experiences.
What Did the Internment of Japanese Americans Mean? by Alice Yang Murray
Call Number: D769.8.A6 W53 2000
During WWII, over 120,000 Japanese Americans were removed and confined for four years in sixteen camps located throughout the western half of the United States. The internment of Japanese Americans remains a largely unknown episode of WWII history. The selections explore the U.S. government's role in planning and carrying out the removal and internment of thousands of citizens, resident aliens, and foreign nationals, and the ways in which Japanese Americans coped with or resisted their removal and incarceration.
Letters from the 442nd by Minoru Masuda; Hana Masuda; Dianne Bridgman
Call Number: D769.31 442nd .M36 2008
This is the first collection of letters by a member of the legendary 442nd Combat Team, which served in Italy and France during World War II. Written to his wife by a medic serving with the segregated Japanese American unit, the letters describe a soldier's daily life. Minoru Masuda's vivid and lively letters portray his surroundings, his daily activities, and the people he encountered. Excerpts from the 442nd daily medical log provide context for the letters, and Hana interposes brief recollections of her experiences. The letters are accompanied by snapshots, a drawing made in the field, and three maps drawn by Masuda.
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
Call Number: PS3606.O737 H68 2009
Set in the ethnic neighborhoods of Seattle during World War II and Japanese American internment camps of the era, this debut novel tells the heartwarming story of widower Henry Lee, his father, and his first love Keiko Okabe.
By Order of the President by Greg Robinson
Call Number: D769.8.A6 R63 2001
On February 19, 1942, following the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed a fateful order. Executive Order 9066 allowed for the removal of Japanese aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent from their West Coast homes and their incarceration. FDR's contributions have been seen as negligible. Now, using Roosevelt's own writings, his advisors' letters and diaries, and internal government documents, Greg Robinson reveals the president's central role in making and implementing the internment and examines not only what the president did but why.
Executive Order 9066 by Maisie Conrat; Richard Conrat
Call Number: D769.8.A6 C6
That pictures can express truth more succinctly than words is proved here in the images. The wistful, forlorn look of the children; the hopeless, dejected expression of their elders; the Nisei Grill that soon will be 'under new management'; the foreboding sign declaring that all one's possessions must be sold; the white storekeeper's sneering words 'We don't want any Japs back here EVER!'; the concentration camps; each is a powerful reminder of a nightmare that was acted out in our land of the free, all as the result of racism and wartime hysteria.
Experiences of Japanese American Women During and after World War II by Precious Yamaguchi
Call Number: eBook
Experiences of Japanese American Women during and after World War II: Living in Internment Camps and Rebuilding Life Afterwards examines the experiences of Japanese American women who were in internment camps during World War II and after. Precious Yamaguchi follows these women after they were released and shows how they tried to rebuild their lives. Yamaguchi provides a feminist, intergenerational, and historical study of how unequal the justice system has been to this group of people and how it has affected their quality of life, identity, and relationships.