The history of Japanese immigration and settlement in the United States from 1885 onward is one of continual accommodation to political, economic, and social restrictions. The immigrant generations ineligibility for citizenship provided the legal pretext for antialien land laws in California and other Western states and threatened the economic security of the 90% who settled in this area. And, in 1924, it was the legal foundation upon which the discriminatory Oriental exclusion clauses were built into the immigration act of that year. In 1942, common ancestry with the enemy that launched the Pearl Harbor attack took precedence over decades of residence by law-abiding aliens and their American-born, American-citizen descendants, who by that time outnumbered the foreign born two to one. The loyalty of all persons of Japanese “blood” was questioned, and more than 110,000 Japanese American residents of West Coast states - aliens and citizens alike - were evacuated from their homes and moved into barbed-wire enclosed camps. The book gives the broad background necessary for interpreting both spoilage and salvage the way of life that Japanese Americans developed through the years of their residence in this country. And synthesizes the results of the historical, institutional, and statistical analyses and provides a frame of reference for detailed life histories of fifteen resettlers. -- From the book jacket.

Includes index.

Part one. Patterns of social and demographic change -- Part 2. The course of individual experience.