Books, Arts & Manners: Rising Sun over the West

Democracy on Trial: The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War 11, by Page Smith (Simon & Schuster, 496 pp., $27.50)

AMONG all the subjects of American controversies involving race or ethnicity, perhaps only slavery and segregation have received more widespread condemnation than the World War II relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast. In 1988 President Reagan signed legislation apologizing for “wartime hysteria” and approving payments of $20,000 to relocated Japanese Americans. The bill he signed, passed by almost 2-to-l bipartisan margins in both houses of Congress, was inspired by a Carter-era congressional commission, packed with liberals (such as former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and former Congressman Father Robert Drinan) and heavily staffed by Japanese Americans.

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Ken Masugi

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Democracy on Trial: The Japanese-American Evacuation and Relocation in World War 11, by Page Smith (Simon & Schuster, 496 pp., $27.50)

AMONG all the subjects of American controversies involving race or ethnicity, perhaps only slavery and segregation have received more widespread condemnation than the World War II relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast. In 1988 President Reagan signed legislation apologizing for “wartime hysteria” and approving payments of $20,000 to relocated Japanese Americans. The bill he signed, passed by almost 2-to-l bipartisan margins in both houses of Congress, was inspired by a Carter-era congressional commission, packed with liberals (such as former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and former Congressman Father Robert Drinan) and heavily staffed by Japanese Americans.