| Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American: Schooling Seattle's Japanese Americans During World War II Contributor(s): Pak, Yoon (Author) |
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ISBN: 0415932351 ISBN-13: 9780415932356 Publisher: Routledge OUR PRICE: $59.80 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2001 Annotation: On a spring afternoon in 1942, Japanese American (Nisei) students in Seattle's Washington School said goodbye to their friends and boarded buses bound for a relocation center in Pullayup, Washington. Forced to bring only what they could carry, these students' families sold most of their belongings; they burned much of their personal memorabilia, for fear it would be deemed "suspect" by the FBI. Yet amid the tumult of their evacuation and internment, some students left a record of their departure in letters to their homeroom teacher, Ella Evanson. These engaging letters, at the center of Yoon Pak's "Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American," document junior high students' response to the news of the impending internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In their responses, these students reveal their complex relationship with their schools and their country at a time when their citizenship and patriotism were cast in doubt. Using previously untapped sources, Pak explores how Seattle schools dealt with the dissonance between the rhetoric of democracy and the anti-democratic practice of internment. Yoon Pak painstakingly chronicles these schools' struggle to maintain a tradition of tolerance in the face of the government's evacuation orders. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Education | History - Education | Student Life & Student Affairs - Social Science | Minority Studies |
| Dewey: 371.829 |
| LCCN: 2001019963 |
| Series: Studies in the History of Education (Paperback) |
| Physical Information: 0.64" H x 6.08" W x 8.92" (0.71 lbs) 224 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 1940's - Geographic Orientation - Washington - Chronological Period - 20th Century |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Wherever I Go I'll Always Be a Loyal American is the story of how the Seattle public schools responded to the news of its Japanese American (Nisei) students' internment upon the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 14, 1942. Drawing upon previously untapped letters and compositions written by the students themselves during the time in which the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the internment order took place, Pak explores how the schools and their students attempted to cope with evident contradiction and dissonance in democracy and citizenship. Emerging from the school district's tradition of emphasizing equality of all races and the government's forced evacuation orders based on racial exclusion, this dissonance became real and lived experience for Nisei school children, whose cognitive dissonance is best revealed in poignant phrases like "I am and will always be an American citizen." |