Judgment without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II by Tetsuden Kashima

calls the "Fraser RiverWar" between American miner-soldiers and theNlaka'pamux peoples, Daniel P.Marshall asserts that the "defining influence" in British Columbia during its for mative year of 1858 was "the extended reach of theAmerican West" (p. 65). JohnLutz shows thatbetween 1854and 1869northern aboriginal peoples defied "law, army, and navy towork, raid, and cohabit with the people of Puget Sound with relative impunity" (pp. 94-5). Ital ian immigrants also did not think of Canada or theUnited States but of VAmerica.Drawing largelyon BritishColumbian evidence, Patricia K. Wood demonstrates that family networks, mutual aid societies, and labor unions eased the trans-bordermoves of Italian immigrants who, as amarginal group, focused on neither the United Statesnor Canadian-American relations innegotiating "theirCanadian identity"(p. 117). In contrast to these accounts of people, Jeremy Mouat traces the competition of two capitalist corporations, theCanadian Pacific Railway and theGreat Northern Railroad, across a perme able border in southeastern British Columbia as he questions nationalist interpretations of Canadian history. Permeability was even truer at sea. JosephE. Taylor III argues thatdiplomats who negotiated treaties to share the salmon catch between Canadian and American fishers "hopelessly confused the biological coherence of [fisheries] management" (p. 156). These fine essays achieve theeditors' goal of exploring the impact of the border and invite more questions about borders, borderlands, and national identity. One hopes thatthisvolume, as theeditors intend, will encourage furtherinves tigation, especially byAmericans, todetermine whether thedestinies of theCanadian West and theAmerican Northwest are as parallel as the titleof thisbook proposes. Judgmentwithout Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II By Tetsuden Kashima University ofWashington Press, Seattle, 2003. Maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 336 pages. $35.00 cloth. Reviewed by Tim Alan Garrison Portland State University,Portland, Oregon Conventional wisdom holds that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor insti gated an irrational overreaction by theUnited States: the federal government, pressured by politicians on the West Coast and fearing in vasion and acts of espionage, took the abrupt step of relocating and interning Japanese Americans and Japanese foreign nationals. In thismeticulous history of the bureaucracy and administration of the internment, Tet suden Kashima shows that theUnited States had programs inplace to intern individuals of Japanese ancestry long before the outbreak of war. These plans enabled federal agents tobegin arresting persons suspected of disloyalty even before the Japanese drew off from the attack. Within months, theUnited States had interned almost 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry.As many as two-thirds of the interneeswere U.S. citizens. Kashima, who was interned as a child at a camp in Topaz, Utah, maintains that the rapid implementation of the program could not have occurred without extensive prewar planning and prejudice. He demonstrates that officials throughout thefederalgovernment had 330 OHQ vol. 106, no. 2 long doubted the loyaltyof first-and second generation Japanese Americans, that these suspicions inspired national agencies todevise plans for internment in the event ofwar, and that Pearl Harbor simply set those plans into motion. In the 1920s,national securityofficials began to express concerns about the potential forespionage or subversion by Japanese immi grants.The FBI andArmy andNavy intelligence offices initiated plans to identify,assess, and imprisonpersonswho posed a threattonational security.Fear of Japanese treacherypermeated theU.S. government by the middle of the 1930s. In 1934, for example, the State Department warned that if war broke out between the United States and Japan,"the entire Japanese popula tion on thewest coast will rise and commit sabotage" (p. 16). In 1936,President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggested that intheeventofwar with the empire thenaval intelligence office should identifypeople of Japanese descent inHawaii and place them inconcentration camps. By 1941, agencieswithin theState, Justice, War, andNavy departments had collaborated ? to the extent that inter-bureaucratic cooperation ispossible ? to construct a loose but elaborate network todetain suspect characters ofGerman, Italian, and Japanese heritage. Kashima also argues thatPearl Harbor al lowed theU.S. government to radicalize this prewar program and expand itsexistingdeten tion plans to a much broader population. He rejects any suggestion that the expansion of internment was unforeseen or irrational and instead argues that after the attack theUnited States quickly seized an opportunity to "remove an undesirable ethnoracial group fromthe West Coast" (p. 130).According toKashima, a broad...

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