DAYS OF INFAMY

A perspective that situates a blight on U.S. history within a broader history around race and citizenship.

Three years after the statement by President Franklin D. Roosevelt that lends the book its title, the Supreme Court ruled that Executive Order 9066—which sent more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent (most of them U.S. citizens) into what the government then termed concentration camps—did not violate the Constitution. Goldstone describes discussions of race at the time the Constitution was written, traces mid-19th-century Japan–U.S. relations, and shows the rising vitriol following the later arrival of Japanese laborers in America. The narrative describes campaigns by White supremacists, particularly in the American West, to limit access to immigration, birthright citizenship, union membership, property ownership, and naturalization and to generate a frenzy of anti-Asian hatred. Pivotal court cases challenging discrimination against Chinese and African Americans help readers understand the groundwork leading to Executive Order 9066. The author closes with a sober warning about the necessity of remaining vigilant in protecting democracy, particularly in light of recent Islamophobic rhetoric. This comprehensive yet concise and readable work adds value to the body of literature about the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II by showing how, far from being an aberration, these events “were inevitable byproducts of a nation that had spent a century either perpetuating or acquiescing to slander and bigotry.”

An informed, persuasive overview of the environment leading to Japanese American incarceration.