Setsuko's secret : Heart Mountain and the legacy of the Japanese American incarceration / Shirley Ann Higuchi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Higuchi, Shirley Ann, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Higuchi, Shirley Ann--Family.

Higuchi, Shirley Ann.

Heart Mountain Relocation Center (Wyo.).

Japanese Americans--Forced removal and internment, 1942-1945--Biography.

Japanese Americans.

Japanese Americans--History.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (364 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020.

Summary:

As children, Shirley Ann Higuchi and her brothers knew Heart Mountain only as the place their parents met, imagining it as a great Stardust Ballroom in rural Wyoming. As they grew older, they would come to recognize the name as a source of great sadness and shame for their older family members, part of the generation of Japanese Americans forced into the hastily built concentration camp in the aftermath of Executive Order 9066. Only after a serious cancer diagnosis did Shirley's mother, Setsuko, share her vision for a museum at the site of the former camp, where she had been donating funds and volunteering in secret for many years. After Setsuko's death, Shirley skeptically accepted an invitation to visit the site, a journey that would forever change her life and introduce her to a part of her mother she never knew. Navigating the complicated terrain of the Japanese American experience, Shirley patched together Setsuko's story and came to understand the forces and generational trauma that shaped her own life. Moving seamlessly between family and communal history, Setsuko's Secret offers a clear window into the "camp life" that was rarely revealed to the children of the incarcerated. This volume powerfully insists that we reckon with the pain in our collective American past.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Illustrations

Foreword | Tom Brokaw

Prologue: Setsuko's Secret

1. The Issei: Or, Where It All Begins

2. Executive Order 9066: Forcing People Out of Their Lives

3. Forced Removal, Exclusion Zones, and Assembly Centers

4. A New Home in the Dust and Wind

5. Establishing Loyalties

6. Relocation

7. Resistance

8. The Nisei Units: Uncommon Courage

9. Ending the Exclusion Order

10. Moving Forward

11. Creating a Memorial

12. Acknowledging Wrongs

13. Preservation under Duress

14. Generational Trauma and the Model Minority

15. Uncovering Setsuko's Secret

Epilogue: Back to Where It Started

Afterword | Irene Hirano Inouye

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Cast of Characters

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 355-337) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780299327880

0299327884

OCLC:

1181833214