WWII Japanese-American Exchange

[Report on the Second Exchange Ship, Teia Maru] Dai niji kokansen Teia Maru no hokoku

Aoki, Hisa

Publication: Tokyo: Maeda Shobo, 1944 (Showa 19). First Edition.

Notes: A book on an aspect of the Japanese internment during the Second World War that has seldom been written about until Evelyn Iritani's Safe Passage (FSG, 2026).

The United States sent some 1500 Japanese and Japanese Americans to Japan in a series of civilian exchanges. In short, every American living in Japan or in Japanese-occupied countries had to be traded for a Japanese resident of the US in order to be repatriated. Some Japanese immigrants volunteered, often taking their Nisei children with them. Others were forced, either by the US government or because the Japanese specifically wanted them to return.

Hisa Aoki, born in Japan in 1900, emigrated to the United States and worked as a columnist for the Kashu Mainichi newspaper in Los Angeles, writing under the pen name Asako Yamamoto. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Aoki's husband was arrested as a possible security threat. Aoki and her children were sent to Arizona where Aoki worked for a farmer (the diary she secretly kept at Gila River was published as White Road of Thorns in 2015). In September 1943, her husband was repatriated to Japan as part of the civilian exchange and Aoki and her children went with him. Aoki continued her diary, which became this book.

The Japanese from the US went on a Swedish ship to India where they met the Teia Maru, a French ship that had been confiscated and renamed by the Japanese navy. The passengers switched ships, which sailed back to New York and Yokohama, respectively. Aoki was part of the second, and largest, exchange. This book is a standard record of a cruise under unusual circumstances, but as it is filled with details of the voyage and profiles of many of the passengers she met, it offers a unique view of an aspect of Japanese American immigration in the mid-20th century.

Aoki's work is not well known. There are only two copies recorded in OCLC, both in Japan. The corresponding American experience has been much better documented, not least because the New Yorker writer Emily Hahn was one of the repatriated American civilians.

182, [1:colophon], [1:blank] pages. Preface by Yoneho Takashima. According to the colophon, 1000 copies were printed.

OCLC: 1267303520, 672407450 (both in Japan).

Edition + Condition: First edition (first printing). A good to very good copy. The spine is cracked and was reglued at an early date. The paper is poor quality and somewhat brittle.

Item No: #366145

Price: $1,250