Divided Destiny

Book excerpt: This vivid and concise history traces more than a hundred years of Japanese Americans in Seattle, before and after the tumultuous events of the early 1940s, when World War II and the incarceration of Japanese Americans divided the community from its past and forced tens of thousands of people to uproot and start anew. Concentration camps at Minidoka, Idaho, and nine other inland locations were the crucible for postwar change and accomplishment, but at the same time shattered the dreams and spirits of many of the older immigrant Issei. The story is local, but it is representative of the Japanese American experience on the U.S. West Coast. Poignant photographs from family albums and historical archives illustrate the book, giving faces and names to history.