These Are Americans: the Japanese Americans in Hawaii in World War II, Signed First Edition, 1951

John Rademaker

First Edition

[Japanese American] [WWII] Rademaker, John A. These Are Americans: the Japanese Americans in Hawaii in World War II. Palo Alto, California: Pacific Books, 1951. First edition. Signed and inscribed by the author on the title page. Heavily illustrated with photographs of the 442nd regimental combat team, Japanese farm workers, nurses, students, and other Japanese American contributors during the war. Bound in publisher’s beige cloth with green and red illustration and lettering. Illustrated dust jacket. 278 pages. 4to.
Rademaker, a sociologist and anthropologist at Willamette University, presents an early postwar study of Japanese Americans, focusing on their war time contributions, cultural heritage, community organization, and integration into American life. Written just six years after the end of World War II, the book addresses both the prewar contributions of Japanese immigrants and their American-born children, as well as the profound disruption caused by wartime exclusion and incarceration under Executive Order 9066. The narrative draws on demographic data, personal accounts, and field studies to counter prevailing stereotypes, framing Japanese Americans as industrious, civic-minded citizens whose story forms part of the larger immigrant narrative in the United States. Notably, Rademaker’s work was published in a period when public opinion about Japanese Americans was still deeply shaped by wartime propaganda, making this text a rare early scholarly defense of their full inclusion in American society. Rademaker's inscription and signature can be seen at the top margin of the title page and is presumably inscribed to a Japanese American man; "With best wishes to an astounding American whose memories of Pearl Harbor Day, 1941 will always make him a part of the scenes and actions described in this book. John A. Rademaker."

Minor wear to dust jacket and cover extremities, some tape on front board cover, and ex library stamps to fore edge and front free endpaper. Dust jacket is price clipped. Some pencil inscriptions on the margins of front papers, otherwise pages clean and binding is sound. Overall very good condition. A signed first edition of a historically significant sociological study on Japanese Americans during the critical transition from wartime prejudice to postwar reintegration, scarce in the market with the author’s signature.

Item #22527

Price: $385.00