Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II

Facing the Mountain: A True Story of Japanese American Heroes in World War II by Daniel James Brown is a work of social history focused on the lives of Japanese Americans at home and on the front lines of the Second World War.

Daniel James Brown's methodology is social history, which means that the lives of ordinary people take precedence over those of political leaders. For example, the author examines significant events, such as the Pearl Harbor attack, through the eyes of Hawaiian witnesses. After describing larger historical events in passing to provide a broader context, Brown relies on a variety of sources—ranging from legal documents and army records to newspapers, wartime propaganda, personal diaries, correspondences, photographs, travel to some of the locations in question, and interviews with his subjects (recorded and in-person)—to detail this narrative. The preservation of memory by using oral history is one of his key objectives.

The book examines the lived experience of first- and second-generation Japanese Americans who were branded “enemy aliens” after Japan’s 1941 Pearl Harbor attack and forced to move from their homes into US concentration camps—a policy justified by wartime necessity. The book also follows the many second-generation Japanese Americans who volunteered to fight in Europe, hoping to prove their loyalty to the United States with their service and, sometimes, their lives. They became the racially segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team and its auxiliary 522nd Field Artillery Battalion, formed in the spring of 1943. These soldiers are now best known for their part in the rescue of the Lost Battalion in Nazi-occupied France in the fall of 1944, and for participating in the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp complex and the Dachau Death March in Nazi Germany in the spring of 1945. This unit became the most decorated of its size; its members came home as American heroes.

This study guide uses the 2021 Kindle edition by Penguin Books.

Content Warning: This book deals with the forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. It covers topics of war, violence, racism, and prejudice. Slurs and prejudiced language are replicated in this guide only in quotations.

Summary

Unlike traditional histories of war focused on battles, strategy, foreign policy, and political and military leaders, Facing the Mountain weaves a unified narrative of this period in US history by focusing on the biographies of Katsugo Miho, Fred Shiosaki, Rudy Tokiwa, and Gordon Hirabayashi, as well as their families. Facing the Mountain primarily covers 1941 to 1945—beginning with the US’s entry into World War II after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and ending with the Allied victory in Europe in May 1945 and in the Asia-Pacific Theater in August of that year. During this time, up to 120,000 Japanese Americans, many of whom were US citizens, were forcibly removed from their homes in the Pacific coast exclusion zone and placed into concentration camps by the War Relocation Authority.

In 1943, the federal government permitted the establishment of a segregated Japanese American army unit to fight in World War II. Brown covers in detail these soldiers’ experiences until the end of the war. For additional background information, Brown includes the history of Japanese immigration into the United States from the late 1800s and the lives of Japanese American immigrants from the 19th century until 1941. Expanding the traditional understanding on the mid-20th century civil rights movement, Brown highlights the legal battles and victories won by Japanese Americans, culminating in the 1988 Civil Liberties Act—an official government apology to and compensation for Japanese American victims of forced relocation and imprisonment.

Brown addresses questions of identity, otherness, the history of social and institutional racism in the US, the immigrant experience, collective punishment, heroism, peaceful protest, civil rights, the industrial-scale violence of the Holocaust, the horrors of war, and improbable survival. Many of the subjects of this book must face mountains literally and figuratively.