Serving Our Country: Japanese American Women in the Military during World War II

"Brenda Moore gives us such an eye-opening look at the racialized genderings of World War II--the war we think we know so much about and yet, in fact, are just beginning to really grasp in all its complexity. Furthermore, using in-depth narratives and exploring Japanese American women's prewar, wartime, and postwar experiences, Moore reminds us that any war is a heady mix of state manipulation, popular anxieties, and individual women's own subtle forms of agency. This a book for right now." --Cynthia Enloe, author of Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women's Lives Following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor and America's declaration of war on Japan, the U.S. War Department allowed up to five hundred second-generation, or "Nisei," Japanese American women to join the Women's Army Corps and, in smaller numbers, the Army Medical Corps. Through in-depth interviews with surviving Nisei women who enlisted, Brenda L. Moore provides fascinating firsthand accounts of their service. Interested primarily in shedding light on the service of Nisei women during the war, the author argues for the relevance of these experiences to larger questions of American race relations and views on gender and their intersections, particularly in the country's highly charged wartime atmosphere. Uncovering a page in American history that has been obscured, Moore adds nuance to our understanding of the situation of Japanese Americans during the war. Brenda L. Moore is an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, and is the author of To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race: The Story of the Only African American WACs Stationed Overseas during World War II.