The intent of this first phase of the encyclopedia is to provide a free, easy-to-use, and reliable reference work on the World War II exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans and related topics. While not a scholarly work — and not directly intended for
The intent of this first phase of the encyclopedia is to provide a free, easy-to-use, and reliable reference work on the World War II exclusion and incarceration of Japanese Americans and related topics. While not a scholarly work — and not directly intended for an academic audience — we wanted it to reflect the state of scholarship in the field and to draw on the latest research.
I selected the headwords by reviewing some of the major overview works on the Japanese American World War II experience and extracting concepts that seemed to recur in them. These included some topics related to the Japanese American experience prior to the war, since it is generally accepted now that one cannot understand the World War II period without understanding what came before. Recent overview works also cover what happened to Japanese Americans in the early postwar years as individuals and communities struggled to rebuild their lives and also cover the movement for redress and reparations that culminated with the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. So topics related to those general time periods are also a part of this encyclopedia.
But beyond these basic topics — topics that one cannot really tell the story of the Japanese American World War II experience without — I also wanted to include a range of other topics that scholars