Voices Raised in Protest: Defending North American Citizens of Japanese Ancestry, 1942-49

Stephanie Bangarth

Jul 2008 · UBC Press

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The uprooting and confinement of Japanese Americans and Japanese Canadians during the Second World War constituted the worst violations of citizenship rights in twentieth-century North America. Voices Raised in Protest examines the meaning and impact of these actions and how they diverged in Canada and the United States.

Many North Americans opposed their governments’ wartime policies toward their fellow citizens of Japanese extraction. In this timely book, Stephanie Bangarth studies the efforts and discourse of anti-internment advocates, and discusses the various cases they brought before the courts. Persons of Japanese ancestry were also active in their own defence. Their critiques of the removal and deportation policies were seminal examples of a growing general interest in civil rights, and would provide a foundation for rights activism in subsequent years.

Voices Raised in Protest offers valuable perspective for today’s debates over ethnic and racial profiling, treatment of "enemy combatants," and tensions between civil-liberty and security imperatives. It will be of interest to activists and general readers as well as to scholars and students in history, law, politics, and Asian Canadian/American studies.

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Stephanie Bangarth is an assistant professor of history at King’s University College at The University of Western Ontario.