In Defense of Justice

Joseph Kurihara and the Japanese American Struggle for Equality

Author: Eileen H. Tamura

A bold leader of the resistance during the incarceration of Japanese Americans

Cloth – $42

978-0-252-03778-8

eBook – $29.95

978-0-252-09506-1

Publication Date

Cloth: 09/20/2013

Series: The Asian American Experience

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About the Book

As a leading dissident in the World War II concentration camps for Japanese Americans, Joseph Yoshisuke Kurihara stands out as an icon of Japanese American resistance. In this astute biography, Kurihara's life provides a window into the history of Japanese Americans during the first half of the twentieth century. Born in Hawai'i to Japanese parents who immigrated to work on the sugar plantations, Kurihara was transformed by the forced removal and incarceration of ethnic Japanese during World War II.

As an inmate at Manzanar in California, Kurihara became one of the leaders of a dissident group within the camp and was implicated in "the Manzanar incident," a serious civil disturbance that erupted on December 6, 1942. In 1945, after three years and seven months of incarceration, he renounced his U.S. citizenship and boarded a ship for Japan, never to return to the United States. Shedding light on the turmoil within the camps as well as the sensitive and formerly unspoken issue of citizenship renunciation among Japanese Americans, In Defense of Justice explores one man's struggles with the complexities of loyalty and dissent.

About the Author

Eileen H. Tamura is a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, at the University of Hawai'i Manoa. She is the author of Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii and coauthor of The Rise of Modern Japan.

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Reviews

"A masterpiece deserving of inclusion in the pantheon of books on Japanese American World War II dissent-protest-resistance."--Nichi Bei Weekly

"Tamura has done a great job of research and examination of this individual and of the history of the Japanese American community during WWII."--International Examiner

"Beautifully written."--The Journal of American History

"A notable addition to the revisionist literature on the wartime removal and confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans."--Pacific Affairs

Blurbs

"A substantial contribution to Japanese American historiography and collective memory. Tamura clearly sets forth the importance of dissident leader Joseph Kurihara as a quintessential personification of the transformation of Japanese Americans from patriots to protestors as a consequence of their unjust World War II eviction and imprisonment."--Arthur A. Hansen, coeditor of Reflections on Shattered Windows: Promises and Prospects for Asian American Studies