Stephanie Hinnershitz’s groundbreaking account investigates how the prison labor system was imposed on Japanese Americans and permanent resident non-citizens of Japanese ancestry who were confined in War Relocation Authority (WRA) incarceration camps (formerly “internment” camps) during World War II. The actual internment camps (for non-citizens of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry, run by the Immigration and Naturalization Service for the Justice Department) are not included in this book.

The temporary detention centers (formerly the euphemistic “assembly centers”) that first housed the incarcerees established Work Corps in which prisoners signed up to work in the skilled and unskilled jobs needed to operate the facilities. Wages could not exceed the minimum wage of an American soldier, $21 a month (pp. 42–43). Employing the prisoners meant that costs to operate the detention centers, and later the WRA incarceration camps, were much less than if the workers were Euroamericans hired at prevailing rates. The...

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