| Life Behind Barbed Wire: The World War II Internment Memoirs of a Hawaii Issei Subjects: Soga Keiho 1873-1957; Japanese Americans -- Evacuation and relocation 1942–1945; World War 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives American; World War 1939–1945 -- Japanese Americans; Japanese Americans -- Ethnic identity; Japanese Americans -- Hawaii -- B; Yasutaro Soga's Life behind Barbed Wire (Tessaku seikatsu) is an exceptional firsthand account of the incarceration of a Hawai'i Japanese during World War II. On the evening of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Soga, the editor of a Japanese-language newspaper, was arrested along with several hundred other prominent Issei ( Japanese immigrants) in Hawai'i. After being held for six months on Sand Island, Soga was transferred to an Army camp in Lordsburg, New Mexico, and later to a Justice Department camp in Santa Fe. He would spend just under four years in custody before returning to Hawai'i in the months following the end of the war. |