Dirty Hearts

Book excerpt: Fernando Morais’ Dirty Hearts is a tour de force of literary journalism that investigates the discriminatory treatment of the Japanese immigrant community in Brazil during World War II and in the aftermath of Japan’s defeat and unconditional surrender. In contrast to the internment camps and compulsory military service that characterized the Japanese American wartime experience, this book traces the rise to power of Shindō Renmei, an ultranationalist secret society that formed in response to the anti-Japanese measures enacted under Getulio Vargas’ Estado Novo. Based in São Paulo, the group used terrorism, propaganda campaigns, and conspiracy theories to violently enforce its narrative of Japan’s victory. These traumatic events nevertheless brought about a permanent transformation in the Japanese Brazilian community from a largely insular colony with close ties to its imperial homeland to its new identity as an ethnic minority in postwar Brazil’s fraught racial democracy.