Research Catalog

Title

Nisei memories : my parents talk about the war years / Paul Howard Takemoto [interviewer].

Author

Takemoto, Kenneth Kaname

Publication

Seattle : University of Washington Press, ©2006.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Takemoto, Paul Howard
• Takemoto, Alice

Description

xii, 237 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, portraits; 23 cm.

Summary

• "Nisei Memories is an extraordinarily moving account of two second-generation Japanese Americans who were demonized as threats to national security during World War II. Based on Paul Takemoto's interviews with his parents, in which they finally divulge their past, Nisei Memories follows their lives before, during, and after the war - his father serving the country, his mother imprisoned by it." "At the start of the war, twenty-one-year-old Kaname (Ken) Takemoto was a sophomore at the University of Hawaii. Although classified as an "enemy alien," he served in the army, first as a Varsity Victory Volunteer and then as a combat medic with the 100th Battalion /442nd Regimental Combat Team in Italy."
• "Fifteen-year-old Alice Setsuko Imamoto was attending high school in California when the war began. Soon after, her father and mother were both imprisoned. She and her three sisters were sent to an assembly center in Santa Anita, where they joined their mother before being reunited at a relocation camp in Jerome, Arkansas."
• "Like so many others, Ken and Alice had never spoken of their experiences, which, as their son explains, "loomed as backdrops to our lives, but until now were never discussed." While his father had relived his wartime experiences over and over in his mind, his mother blocked many of hers from memory. Takemoto fills in some of the gaps with information gleaned from correspondence and documents. Of unusual power and appeal, the interviews lead readers through the half century of uncertainty and trauma endured by the family before it was able to confront issues central to its existence. They tell a story of perseverance and forgiveness and, ultimately, pride."--Jacket.

Series Statement

The Scott and Laurie Oki series in Asian American studies

Uniform Title

Scott and Laurie Oki series in Asian American studies

Subject

• Takemoto, Kenneth Kaname
• Takemoto, Alice
• 1939-1945
• Japanese Americans > Forced removal and internment, 1942-1945
• World War, 1939-1945 > Personal narratives, American
• Internment camp inmates > United States > Biography
• Japanese American soldiers > Biography
• Oral history
• Internment camp inmates
• Japanese American soldiers
• Weltkrieg 1939-1945
• Umsiedlung
• United States
• USA
• Japaner

Genre/Form

• Personal narratives, American.
• Biography.
• Oral histories
• Biographies
• Personal narratives – American
• Oral history.

Note

• Transcript of interviews with Kenneth and Alice Takemoto.
• Includes index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

• 0295985852
• 9780295985855

LCCN

• 2005026602
• 9780295985855

OCLC

61704703

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library