INJUSTICE IN WARTIME

Nazis & Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II. By Max Paul Friedman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xii + 359 pp. Photos, illustrations, notes, bibliography and index. $30.00.

Judgment Without Trial: Japanese American Imprisonment during World War II. By Tetsuden Kashima. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. xi + 316 pp. Map, illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography and index. $35.00.

Patricia E. Roy
University of Victoria

These are justifiably angry books. Both authors direct their animus at the United States government's internment of civilians during the Second World War. In Judgment Without Trial, Tetsuden Kashima condemns the United States' treatment of its Nikkei, both its own citizens and nationals of Japan; in Nazis & Good Neighbors, Max Paul Friedman criticizes the internment in the United States of Germans from several Latin American nations until well after the war was over. Both well-researched books reveal that most internees were innocent victims of ill-founded suspicions. The Japanese also suffered from long-standing racial prejudice; the Germans in Latin America from economic jealousy.