"Impounded People," Japanese-American Incarceration Prepared by Four War Relocation Authority Anthropologists, 1970

Edward H. Spicer Katherine Luomala Asael Hansen Marvin Opler

First Edition

Japanese American incarceration study published in 1970, based on a War Relocation Authority report prepared by four anthropologists who had served within the federal camp system during World War II. Edward H. Spicer worked at Poston and later directed the WRA Community Analysis Section; Katherine Luomala served at Gila River, Asael T. Hansen at Heart Mountain, and Marvin K. Opler at Tule Lake. Completed in 1946, the final report documents the forced removal of Japanese Americans, the formation of communities within the camps, and the administrative dismantling of the centers, while tracing how relations between incarcerated people and WRA administrators changed over time and shaped political, social, and psychological life.

Spicer, Edward H.; Asael T. Hansen; Katherine Luomala; and Marvin K. Opler. Impounded People: Japanese-Americans in the Relocation Centers. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1970. First Edition, Second printing. Octavo, 342 pages, illustrated, bound in orange cloth with original dust jacket designed by Erwin Acuntius. Ownership inscription reading “E. Shaw” on the front free endpaper. The volume opens with Spicer’s retrospective introduction to the relocation centers and reproduces the authors’ wartime study in four principal sections: “Moving In,” “Being Sorted,” “Settling Down,” and “Getting Out.” Chapters address WRA policy, evacuation, work and wages, rumor, schools, community organization, registration, segregation, staff and evacuee relations, resettlement, and the closing of the camps. The text includes photographs of removal, barracks, schools, councils, work, protest, military enlistment, family life, and cemetery rites, followed by an annotated bibliography of the Community Analysis Section and a bibliography of publications concerning the relocation centers.

The original report was completed in Washington during the final months of the WRA and reflects the agency’s effort to explain the social consequences of policies it had administered. Its authors describe scapegoating and racial hostility, but they also write from positions embedded within the institutional structure that confined the communities under study. The resulting text preserves the language of federal administration beside detailed observations of7/23/2026 housing, labor, education, rumor, political division, resistance, and adaptation. Published more than two decades after the camps closed, the book returned an internal government analysis to public circulation as Japanese American organizations, historians, and former incarcerees were pressing the wartime record into renewed national debate. Dust jacket with tearing, rubbing, and edge wear; cloth binding sound and bright; scattered tonal variation and spotting to the text block; ownership inscription on the front free endpaper. Overall good condition. A government authored account of Japanese American incarceration written by anthropologists who observed the relocation centers from within the War Relocation Authority.

Item #23653

Price: $225.00