A FENCE AWAY FROM FREEDOM: Japanese Americans and World War II

An excellent history of Japanese-American internment camps that, while claiming not to be exhaustive, is comprehensive in scope. Each chapter contains a strong, concise introduction, followed by a series of firsthand accounts from former internees. Pieced together in great detail is the history of the camps--their creation, the evacuation of Japanese-Americans, etc. From this nucleus, the text branches out into discussions of Japanese orphanages that were transplanted into the camps, Japanese deported into the US from Latin America, and much more. Finally, Levine (The Tree That Would Not Die, p. 1113) examines the adjustments of the inmates at the end of the war and the legacy of the camps. Levine has a gift for working with oral histories: Each quote she uses, while contributing to the overall fabric of the narrative, also constitutes a self-contained vignette.