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Lawyer, jailer, ally, foe : complicity and conscience in America's World War II concentration camps / Eric L. Muller.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2023]Description: xix, 283 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 25 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781469673974
  • 1469673975
Subject(s):
Contents:
Introduction: the WRA and Japanese America -- Book One: Jerry Housel at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Late October 1942 -- November 1942 -- February 1943 -- March 1943 -- May-June 1943 -- Book Two: Ted Haas and Thomas Masuda at Poston in Arizona. Late August 1942 -- November 1942 -- February 1943 -- June 1943 -- July 1943 -- Book Three: James Hendrick Terry at Gila River in Arizona. December 1942 -- Late January 1943 -- Late February 1943 -- May 1943 -- December 1943.
Summary: "In the Japanese American relocation camps of World War II, internees could, on any given day, be both clients and victims of their assigned War Relocation Authority lawyers. The morally ambiguous remit of these attorneys was wide and often contradictory, including overseeing the day-to-day administration of the camps, settling internal disputes between inmates, managing conflict between detainees and their government captors, and providing legal representation for prisoners outside of the camps. In re-creating the daily lives of these WRA attorneys, Eric L. Muller, a leading expert on Japanese American relocation and internment during World War II, seeks to capture historical subjects as three-dimensional, flawed human beings"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 940.5317 M958 Available 33111011281579
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

It is 1942, and World War II is raging. In the months since Pearl Harbor, the US has plunged into the war overseas--and on the home front, it has locked up tens of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans in concentration camps, tearing them from their homes on the West Coast with the ostensible goal of neutralizing a supposed internal threat.



At each of these camps the government places a white lawyer with contradictory instructions: provide legal counsel to the prisoners, and keep the place running. Within that job description are a vast array of tasks, and an enormous amount of discretion they can use for good or for ill. They fight to protect the property the prisoners were forced to leave behind; they help the prisoners with their wills and taxes; and they interrogate them about their loyalties, sometimes driving them to tears. Most of these lawyers think of themselves as trying to do good in a bad system, and yet each ends up harming the prisoners more than helping them, complicit in a system that strips people of their freedoms and sometimes endangers their lives.



In Lawyer, Jailer, Ally, Foe , Eric L. Muller brings to vivid life the stories of three of these men, illuminating a shameful episode of American history through imaginative narrative deeply grounded in archival evidence. As we look through the lawyers' sometimes-clear and sometimes-clouded eyes, what emerges is a powerful look at the day-by-day, brick-by-brick perpetration of racial injustice--not just by the system itself, but by the men struggling to do good within it.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction: the WRA and Japanese America -- Book One: Jerry Housel at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. Late October 1942 -- November 1942 -- February 1943 -- March 1943 -- May-June 1943 -- Book Two: Ted Haas and Thomas Masuda at Poston in Arizona. Late August 1942 -- November 1942 -- February 1943 -- June 1943 -- July 1943 -- Book Three: James Hendrick Terry at Gila River in Arizona. December 1942 -- Late January 1943 -- Late February 1943 -- May 1943 -- December 1943.

"In the Japanese American relocation camps of World War II, internees could, on any given day, be both clients and victims of their assigned War Relocation Authority lawyers. The morally ambiguous remit of these attorneys was wide and often contradictory, including overseeing the day-to-day administration of the camps, settling internal disputes between inmates, managing conflict between detainees and their government captors, and providing legal representation for prisoners outside of the camps. In re-creating the daily lives of these WRA attorneys, Eric L. Muller, a leading expert on Japanese American relocation and internment during World War II, seeks to capture historical subjects as three-dimensional, flawed human beings"-- Provided by publisher.

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