1942 Internment Memoir

[Breathing in America During Wartime] Senjika amerika ni kokyusuru

Taguchi, Shuji

Publication: Tokyo: Showatosho, 1942 (Showa 17). First Edition.

Notes: In all likelihood, this is the first published book to describe the internment of the Japanese in the United States following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Taguchi (1905–1956), a Japanese documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, had been in the United States for several years making newsreels for American studios; he was also the head of the US office of the Nippon News Film Corporation.

In early December 1941, FBI agents arrested and questioned Taguchi. He was imprisoned on Ellis Island along with other Japanese, German and Italian nationals, all of whom had also been classified as enemy aliens. Taguchi was returned to Japan in 1942 as part of a negotiated prisoner exchange with the Japanese government. He published this blow-by-blow account of the indignities of the process in December 1942.

Taguchi's experience at the start of the war was similar to that of many Japanese immigrants in the US. As far as I am aware, no other writer wrote such a detailed account, and certainly not so soon after the events. His experience was also unusual in that Taguchi was on the East Coast and very few Japanese outside of the Pacific states were interned during the war.

Despite the unfair treatment Taguchi felt he was given, he remained pro-American and was hired by the US government to make propaganda films to be shown in occupied Japan (see Taguchi's Japanese Wikipedia page for more details).

OCLC: 672410462 (National Diet Library, Waseda). There is also a copy in the Yuji Ichioka papers at UCLA. Not in A Buried Past.

Edition + Condition: First edition. A very good copy in the publisher's printed wrappers, with clear tape reinforcement at the top and bottom of the spine.

Item No: #363247

Price: $3,500