SAFE PASSAGE

A timely story from a receding past, recounting the exchange of civilians behind enemy lines during World War II.

As author and journalist Iritani chronicles, the onset of American involvement in World War II left many Americans in enemy homelands or occupied territory: diplomats housed in a German castle, missionaries in China and Japan, journalists and travelers across the globe. Through a quietly negotiated agreement, American and Japanese diplomats arrived at a complex exchange to return civilians to their home countries. In Washington, D.C., this work fell to an obscure office in the State Department called the Special War Problems Division, which dealt with “foreign entanglements that fell outside the purview of generals and admirals.” Its officers were given wide latitude but stymied at some points: For instance, the division wanted to return civilians regardless of their “usefulness in the prosecution of the war,” meaning that the Japanese might conceivably request that spies or military personnel be exchanged. American intelligence indeed interdicted, banning “anyone from Hawai’i, merchant seamen, pearl divers, priests, businessmen, and community leaders.” Sadly, though, many Japanese exiled to their ancestral country were American-born children of Japanese immigrants; as Iritani notes, while both combatant countries violated the rights of civilians, only the U.S. resorted to “kidnapping and imprisoning people to use as bargaining chips.” It’s testimonial to their patriotism, she adds, that of 124 Japanese American children deported, 108 eventually returned to the U.S. after the war. Iritani’s cast of characters includes many memorable characters, such as New Yorker writer Emily Hahn and nisei deportee Don Hasuike, an intrepid Boy Scout and Green Hornet fan who spoke out about the injustices his family and fellow Japanese Americans suffered. Iritani reminds readers that many were expelled under the terms of a law aimed “to provide a path for the U.S. government to legally deport those people it deemed ‘disloyal,’” which rings familiar today.

A capable exploration of a little-known episode in an era of total war.