Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American: Schooling Seattle's Japanese Americans during World War II by Yoon K. Pak (review)

extraordinary, making her accounts of her activi ties informativeand engaging. Susan Starbuck writes that,while she had more than twohundred hours of interviews with Wolf, taped over the course of twentyyears, and boxes of documents, shewas at firststymied as tohow to shape thebook.Wolf's styleof telling stories thatendedwith a punch linedid not lend itselfto conventional autobiographical narrative (p. xi). Starbuck's solution of grouping the sto ries into six sections corresponding to the major periods of Wolf's life is successful.Each section beginswith a short introduction,and then Wolf's voice takesover.Starbuck allocates furthercom mentary and historical context to endnotes. The voices of friends,colleagues, and familyappear in appendixes, along with a narrative onWolf's deportation case, her recounting of two other importantdeportation stories,and a speech she delivered at SeattleUniversity in 1997, when she was presentedwith an honorary doctorate. The storiesare not only inspirationaland in structivebut as enjoyable as a good novel. Al though she was wise, resourceful, and unafraid of confrontation, humor was Wolf's primary vehicle: "I'm not opinionated. I'm just always right,"she said (p. 215). On another occasion, she remembered "sittingdown at a banquet next to the Boise [lumber company] vice president and saying, 'Oh, hi, John. How are you coming along with thedestruction of our national for ests?'" (p. 184) Full of nitty-gritty details about organizing andWolf's philosophy of how to get along and how to get thingsdone, thisbook could be used as a textbook for effective activism. "... itall comes down to theorganizing skillsI learned inthethir ties ? that is,getting everyone involved," Wolf stated (p. 176).Anyone wanting towin friends fortheircause and to influencepeople will benefit from thisbook. It could be used in courses in conflictresolution, organizational development, and the history of any of themovements that Wolf's lifetouched.General readers who are inter ested inhistoryorwho justwant tomeet a fasci natingpersonwill alsofind it wellworth theirtime. Wherever I Goy IWill Always Be a Loyal American: Schooling Seattle's Japanese Americans during World War II byYoonK. Pak RoutledgeFalmer, New York, 2002. Photographs, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 219 pages. $21.95 paper. Reviewed by Robert C. Sims Boise State University,Boise, Idaho The intriguing quotation in the title of this work embodies the wartime dilemma Nisei schoolchildren faced as theytriedto recon cile theprinciples ofdemocracy they were taught with the realityofbeing treatedas enemy aliens. This study isbased on studentpapers from sev enth- and eighth-grade classes atWashington School, located near theSeattleCentral District. The papers include essayswritten just following PearlHarbor, some bynon-Nisei students,along with letters written toElla Evanson, a teacher at the school. Some of the letters were written in earlyspring,prior to thechildren's removalfrom Seattle,and othersfromPuyallup Assembly Cen terin Washington State.The author uses this ma terialto examine the"processbywhichWashing ton School and itsstudents,administrators, and teachers coped with the news of the incarc?ra 290 OHQ vol. 104, no. 2 tion" (p. 156).Somemight bemisled by the title, forthebook, unlikemost works on the wartime experience of Japanese Americans, focuses on the responses of schools and students to events prior to incarceration. The author provides a context for these ac counts ina detailed look at citizenship and char actereducation intheSeattlepublic schoolsfrom the1910sto the 1940s,noting theshift during the 1930s to an emphasis on tolerance and inter culturalism, an educational approach thatem phasizes learningabout other cultures as part of a democratic ideal.This accounts for more than a thirdof the textand isan importantcontribu tion tounderstanding educational policy in this area.As theauthor points out,however, itisone thing to examine curriculum guides and quite another toknow "the extenttowhich educators actually used them" (p. 85). In thiscase, the au thor uses the students'writings to show how Washington School attempted todeal with the crisis. These writings reflectthe Nisei students' in ternalization of the school's "citizenship, toler ance, character, and democratic education pro grams" (p. 93) and reveal strongaffirmationsof their American identities, which this work seems to suggest is evidence thatNisei students had taken theircitizenship education toheart. While itisclear thatthese studentswere affirmingtheir identitiesas citizens, it is equally clear that they were aware that many Americans, and even their government, saw them as suspect. The dissonance thestudentsexperienced isevident inthe materi als...