When the emperor was divine

Sample

Foreword by Daniel K. Inouye

Memoir of a young Issei Methodist clergyman based in Washington state during the trying years of World War II. Published in the fall of 1967, Daisuke Kitagawa's account was among the first book-length first-person accounts of the Japanese American incarceration. Kitagawa's account begins by describing the state of the Japanese American community in Washington prior to the war before following his community into the Pinedale Assembly Center in Fresno, California, then to Tule Lake. At Tule Lake, he ministers to the population while also assisting camp administrators. After segregation, he turns his attention to assisting with resettlement before going on to work at the Military Intelligence Service Language School in Minnesota. The memoir ends with the end of the war and does not discuss his postwar life. Though written in the first person and focused on Kitagawa's experiences, it is meant to tell a larger story; as Kitagawa writes: "The book is autobiographical, but it is not my autobiography. If anything, it is a collective autobiography of the Japanese-American community as a whole, in which I am simultaneously an observer, an actor, and the narrator."

Sample

Cynthia Kadohata

After twelve-year-old Sumiko and her Japanese-American family are relocated from their flower farm in southern California to an internment camp on a Mojave Indian reservation in Arizona, she helps her family and neighbors, becomes friends with a local Indian boy, and tries to hold on to her dream of owning a flower shop.

Sample

Ruth Aliav and Peggy Mann

Most of us think of the Mossad as the Israeli equivalent to America's CIA. That is correct today (2017), but in the late 1930s, the Mossad was made up of nine men and one woman--Ruth Kluger. Their purpose was to spirit Europe's Jews into, as they called it, "Eretz Israel", the "Land of Israel". Since Great Britain had severely restricted legal Jewish immigration to Palestine (the "Aliyah Aleph"), the Mossad smuggled Jews into Palestine (the "Aliyah Beth"). Ruth tells her story from the time she was recruited into the Mossad through the end of World War II and the establishment of the State of Israel. The book is much more interesting than this synopsis, believe me. And Ruth Kluger-Aliav (she changed her name when she emigrated to Israel) is not to be confused with Ruth Kluger, a professor emerita of German studies at the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Kluger (b. 1931) was deported from Vienna and spent time in concentration camps as a child; her book *Still Alive* tells of those experiences.

Sample

Jeane Westin

Near the start of World War II, Page Hannaday, a general's daughter, Jill Hammersmith, a wealthy Californian, Bunny Palermo, a divorcee, and Elisabeth Gardner, a former fashion model, become friends and WAC officer candidates.