The Unquiet Nisei An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey [Hardcover]

An oral-history-based biography of a seminal Asian-American activist. The book traces Embrey's life from her youth in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, to her harrowing experiences in the Japanese internment camps, to her many decades of passionate advocacy on behalf of her fellow internees.An oral-history-based biography of a seminal Asian-American activist. The book traces Embrey's life from her youth in the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles, to her harrowing experiences in the Japanese internment camps, to her many decades of passionate advocacy on behalf of her fellow internees.

Lest we forget, Sue Kunitomi Embrey, a second generation woman of color, was supposed to be a 'quiet American.' Yet as an adult she became a feisty, articulate, and tenacious activist. Based on extensive oral histories, The Unquiet Nisei recounts how Sue emerged from the WRA camp at Manzanar to become a legendary leader of the Japanese American Redress movement. - Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, George and Sakaye Aratani Professor of the Japanese American Internment, Redress,and Community, UCLA In The Unquiet Nisei, Diana Bahr has used her considerable talents as oral historian and writer to craft the story of a twentieth-century odyssey, that of the remarkable Sue Kunitomi Embrey and the nearly 120,000 other persons of Japanese ancestry removed from the West Coast in early 1942 to remote and primitive 'relocation centers.' Using an impressive body of oral recollections that she collected from Embrey and those who knew her, Bahr deftly weaves a narrative that sweeps us along, in often heart-rending detail, in the seemingly unstoppable sequence of fear- and racism-driven decisions that shattered quiet neighborhoods, separated tightly knit families, and left lives in turmoil long after the camps closed in 1945. Bahr meticulously traces the trajectory of Sue Embrey's later life that first took form at Manzanar War Relocation Center. It was to Manzanar that Embrey repeatedly returnelû