A Critique of Internment from Inside Heart Mountain
The Japanese Evacuation and the Minority Problem, Vol. 1
Publication: Heart Mountain, WY: (the author), [1944?]. First Edition.
Notes: A notable Japanese American civil rights statement and one of the only openly critical publications about the Japanese internment issued by an internee during their internment. This pamphlet is datelined Heart Mountain Relocation Center in Heart Mountain, Wyoming, and was printed by the Billings Gazette in Billings, Montana.
Nagata (born Nagata Shinkinchi in Okinawa in 1890 or 1892), came to the United States in 1909 to attend Whittier College and by 1914 he was competing for the school in oratorical contests. After college, he went into business for himself in Los Angeles.
In this pamphlet he says that the ongoing internment of the Japanese during the Second World War was a "tragic page in our glorious history of the nation" and "contrary to the spirit of American democracy and the Christian principles of good will and brotherhood of mankind."
He discusses the disruption to the careers, businesses, and educational progress of the two-thirds of the internees who were American citizens. Nagata criticizes in particular what might be called today the "nanny state," referring to the "paternalistic life in the relocation center" which offered three levels of jobs, paying $12, $16, or $19 per month, but "no room" for internees to "exercise their individual enterprising spirit."
While this pamphlet is probably not unique in the Japanese internment literature, your cataloguer has not found another example of an internee resorting to the all-American protest method—the idiosyncratic pamphlet—while still living inside the camp.
NOTES: The War Relocation Authority records show Nagata's birth year as 1890. His naturalization records, from when he became an American citizen in 1955, indicate he was born in 1892. His participation in oratory competitions for Whittier College was reported in the Whittier News (March 30, 1939) in its column of items from 25 years before. Your cataloger dates this publication to 1944 based on Nagata's reference to the Declaration of the United Nations and the "forthcoming peace conference," which is assumed to be the Dumbarton Oaks Conference in 1944. Nagata died in Japan in 1966.
7 pages. 5 by 8 inches. With a reproduction of a drawing of barracks behind barbed wire on the cover.
OCLC records copies at Yale, Princeton, and the University of Wyoming.
Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A near fine copy.
Item No: #319417
Price: $1,250