Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military During World War II - Hardcover

Following the 1945 attack on Pearl Harbor and America's declaration of war on Japan, the U.S. War Department allowed for up to five hundred second-generation, or "Nisei," Japanese American women to enlist in the Women's Army Corps and, in smaller numbers, in the army medical corps. The true number who did so is unknown to this day. Many of these women, eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States at a time when their ethnicity seemed to call that loyalty into question, enlisted directly from internment camps where they had been confined since soon after Pearl Harbor. Why did these women answer the call to service at a time when Japanese Americans were being denied their rights by being herded into internment camps? Through in-depth interviews with surviving Nisei women who served, Brenda Lee Moore provides fascinating firsthand accounts of their experiences. Moore supplements these interviews with extensive archival research, including a number of personal biographies, to place these women's stories in historical context. Interested primarily in shedding light on the experiences of Nisei women during the war, the author argues for the relevance of these experiences to larger questions of American race relations and views on gender and how they interact, particularly in the country's highly charged wartime atmosphere. Uncovering a page in American history that has been obscured, Moore adds nuance to our understanding of the situation of Japanese Americans during the war.

Brenda Lee Moore is an associate professor of sociology at Suny Buffalo, and is the author of To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACS Stationed Overseas during World War II.