From the editor of the award-winning Children of Manzanar, Heather C.
Lindquist, and Edgar Award winner Naomi Hirahara comes a nuanced account
of the "Resettlement" the relatively unexamined period when ordinary
people of Japanese ancestry, having been unjustly imprisoned during
World War II, were finally released from custody. Given twenty-five
dollars and a one-way bus ticket to make a new life, some ventured east
to Denver and Chicago to start over, while others returned to Southern
California only to face discrimination and an alarming scarcity of
housing and jobs. Hirahara and Lindquist weave new and archival oral
histories into an engaging narrative that illuminates the lives of
former internees in the postwar era, both in struggle and unlikely
triumph. Readers will appreciate the painstaking efforts that rebuilding
required, and will feel inspired by the activism that led to redress and
restitution-and that built a community that even now speaks out against
other racist agendas.