Removal and Return: The Socio-Economic Effects of the War on Japanese Americans

Removal and Return: The Socio-Economic Effects of the War on Japanese Americans, by Leonard Broom and Ruth Riemer, offers a pioneering sociological account of how World War II and the forced wartime removal reshaped the lives of Japanese Americans. Drawing on census records, government data, and original fieldwork--including community surveys and loss assessments--the authors trace prewar occupational structures, the mass disruption caused by evacuation and incarceration, and the uncertain adjustments that followed resettlement. They reveal how the Japanese American community in Los Angeles, once marked by its distinctive concentrations in small-scale proprietorships, agriculture, and produce trading, was fractured by the dispossession of land and businesses, and by the dispersal of entire neighborhoods such as Terminal Island.

At the heart of the book is a comparative analysis of prewar and postwar status, situating Japanese Americans alongside whites and African Americans to highlight both their economic vulnerabilities and their distinctive patterns of resilience. Broom and Riemer examine contract gardening, the fishing industry, and other family-based enterprises, while also assessing the enormous personal and financial losses sustained during removal. Their study pays close attention to questions of stratification and mobility, showing how the evacuation reordered hierarchies within the Japanese American community and forced many into less stable, lower-prestige occupations after the war. By combining empirical rigor with acute sensitivity to lived experience, Removal and Return stands as a foundational text for understanding the long-term socio-economic consequences of wartime incarceration and the resilience of a community rebuilding its place in American life.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.