| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.1

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 34.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. By Eric L. Muller. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. xx + 229 pp. Illustrations, notes, index. $27.50; £17.50.)

     This is the first comprehensive account of the Japanese Americans' wartime internment camp citizens who resisted the government's order to sign up for the draft. Muller makes a meticulous, judicious study of the motives and actions of the resisters, their indictment, trials, and incarceration in federal prisons. 1

    As a prelude to the decision to draft the interned Niseis, the government called upon them to answer questions regarding their loyalty. Most answered "yes" to the loyalty questions, but some answered "no" out of principle because their rights had been violated and they had been sent into camp as potential enemies. 2

     The most prominent instances of refusal to answer "yes" were in the Heart Mountain Camp in Wyoming. One in four answered "no" to the loyalty questions. Those who had answered "no" were segregated in the Tule Lake Camp. Developments in Tule Lake are covered more fully in Michi Weglyn's Years of Infamy (New York, 1976). 3

     The authorities decided to draft Niseis in camp. In January 1944, draft notices were issued. Niseis had a choice of accepting the draft decision or being sent to prison. Some Niseis refused to submit to the draft. The most significant resistance occurred in Heart Mountain, so Muller devotes more pages on developments there. When the draft protestors refused to submit to pre-induction physical exams, the Justice Department called for their immediate arrest. By the end of March 1941, resisters were sent to county jails. 4

     Sixty-three of the Heart Mountain resisters were tried in a federal district court in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in June 1944. In a non-jury trial, they were sentenced to three years in federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, and McNeil Island in Washington State. 5

     The other case that Muller covers is the Minidoka Camp draft resisters' trial in the federal district court of Idaho. The judge, Chase A. Clark, believed the resisters should be sent back to Japan and that the U. S. should then sink the island. The jury arrived instantly at a guilty verdict. . . .

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