The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey (review)

"A story that presents courageous individuals who confront powerful forces within or outside themselves with a dignity that reveals the breadth and depth of the human spirit in the face of failure, defeat, and even death."

(Bedford/St.Martin's Meyer Literature Site, "Glossary of Literary Terms," http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/literature/bedlit/glossary_a.htm [accessed March 2, 2010]).

This definition of tragedy is an apt description of Diana Meyers Bahr's biography of Sue Kunitomi Embrey (1923-2006), which is part of Palgrave Macmillan's Studies in Oral History series. Ms. Embrey's personal story epitomizes those of thousands more Japanese Americans whose lives were damaged or destroyed consequent to the mass war hysteria following the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor. Within four months of the attack, the U.S. federal government implemented a series of legal measures, beginning with the notorious Executive Order 9066, predicated on the flimsy premise of "military necessity," effecting the forcible removal of Japanese Americans from the West Coast and their internment in ten inland War Relocation Centers and various other detention facilities scattered for the most part in remote areas of western states. Some two-thirds of the approximately one hundred ten thousand to one hundred twenty thousand internees were American citizens at the time, who the government euphemistically designated "non-aliens" to obscure the fact of their citizenship; most of the others might have been citizens were it not for racist immigration laws that excluded them from obtaining the status they desired. Given little time to tend to their business and personal affairs before mandatorily reporting to temporary assembly centers, and with severe restrictions on what they were allowed to bring with them to the centers, the government dispossessed the internees of their property, personal possessions, and means of livelihood. Remarkably, in spite of these deprivations, internees did not lose their dignity. Embrey recalled, "The Issei dressed up when the day came to be removed. The women wore hats and gloves and the men wore suits and hats. The Issei never lost their dignity while they were in camp. I never heard my mother say anything about not being proud of being Japanese. I was never ashamed of being Japanese" (150).

According to the book's author, "a predominant response of Japanese Americans was cooperation with the government based on the enryo syndrome. . . meaning reserve, restraint, diffidence" combined with the cultural inclinations to "accept what could not be changed" and "obey authority" (45). In the decades following World War II, this silent suffering of former internees persisted, especially among Issei or first-generation Japanese Americans. Somewhat uncharacteristically, Embrey, a Nisei or second-generation Japanese American, emerged during the 1960s as a forceful activist in a Nisei-led civil rights movement advocating public acknowledgment of, and reparations for, the wartime injustices she and her family, and many thousands more, had endured during a most unfortunate period of U.S. history. Embrey's activism on behalf of these causes, along with the efforts of many other dedicated activists, led eventually to the congressional passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, acknowledging the government's wrongdoing and authorizing payment of reparations to former internees, formal letters of apology from Presidents George H. W. Bush (1990) and Bill Clinton (1993), and, more directly, the establishment of the Manzanar National Historic Site on March 3, 1992, to document and disseminate the history of the first internment camp where Embrey, members of her family, and some ten thousand to eleven thousand other Japanese Americans were held between 1942 and 1945. Embrey's and others' work culminated with the opening of the Manzanar National Historic Site's Interpretive Center on April 24, 2004, just two years before Embrey's death on May 15, 2006.

Bahr's book is based on over fifty hours of interviews with Embrey, conducted over a period of eighteen months beginning...