1942
47 Ronin
A01=Karen Tei Yamashita
Author_Karen Tei Yamashita
Category=FBA
Category=FV
documentary
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eq_fiction
eq_historical-fiction
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
Japanese Americans
Japanese internment camp
Japanese migration
Loyalty Questionnaire
oral history
Pearl Harbor
Product details
- ISBN 9781644453810
- Weight: 776g
- Dimensions: 166 x 241mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Graywolf Press,U.S.
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In February 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorising the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and corral them into inland concentration camps. To be considered for release, they were required to answer the so-called loyalty questionnaire. Question 27 asked the inmates - who had been imprisoned without cause by the US military - whether they were willing to serve in combat for the US military. Question 28 asked them - many of whom American citizens who had never visited Japan - to renounce allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Answering these questions caused volatile divisions within the camps, tore families and friends apart, and had lasting repercussions in the decades postwar.
Questions 27 & 28 reaches backward and forward from the time of the questionnaire, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived in its aftermath. Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring an enormity of archival research into a chorus of stories. With her signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to labourers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.
Karen Tei Yamashita is the author of nine books, including I Hotel, finalist for the National Book Award. A recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, she is Professor Emerita of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
