This is a collection of the last essays by Yuji Ichioka, the foremost authority on Japanese-American history, who passed away two years ago. The essays focus on Japanese Americans during the interwar years and explore issues such as the nisei (American-born generation) relationship toward Japan, Japanese-American attitudes toward Japan's prewar expansionism in Asia, and the meaning of "loyalty" in a racist society--all controversial but central issues in Japanese-American history.
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The late Yuji Ichioka was the founding father of the scholarly study of Japanese-American history. His book on the immigrant generation in America, The Issei: The World of the First-Generation Japanese Immigrants, 1885-1924 (1988), is considered a classic. He invented the term Asian American, and trained many of the scholars now teaching Asian American history at colleges and universities.