American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War

Duncan Ryūken Williams (著)

Author

Duncan Ryūken Williams (著)

Edition

1st Edition

Date

2019.02.19

Pages

400

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Publisher Url

https://www.hup.harvard.edu/

Location

Cambridge, MA, US [劍橋, 麻薩諸塞州, 美國]

Content type

書籍=Book

Language

英文=English

Abstract

This groundbreaking history tells the little-known story of how, in one of our country’s darkest hours, Japanese Americans fought to defend their faith and preserve religious freedom.
The mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is not only a tale of injustice; it is a moving story of faith. In this pathbreaking account, Duncan Ryūken Williams reveals how, even as they were stripped of their homes and imprisoned in camps, Japanese American Buddhists launched one of the most inspiring defenses of religious freedom in our nation’s history, insisting that they could be both Buddhist and American.
Nearly all Americans of Japanese descent were subject to bigotry and accusations of disloyalty, but Buddhists aroused particular suspicion. Government officials, from the White House to small-town mayors, believed that Buddhism was incompatible with American values. Intelligence agencies targeted the Buddhist community for surveillance, and Buddhist priests were deemed a threat to national security. On December 7, 1941, as the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Attorney General Francis Biddle issued a warrant to “take into custody all Japanese” classified as potential national security threats. The first person detained was Bishop Gikyō Kuchiba, leader of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist sect in Hawai‘i.
In the face of discrimination, dislocation, dispossession, and confinement, Japanese Americans turned to their faith to sustain them, whether they were behind barbed wire in camps or serving in one of the most decorated combat units in the European theater. Using newly translated sources and extensive interviews with survivors of the camps and veterans of the war, American Sutra reveals how the Japanese American community broadened our country’s conception of religious freedom and forged a new American Buddhism.

Table of contents

Prologue: Thus Have I Heard: An American Sutra
Buried Texts, Buried Memories
1. America: A Nation of Religious Freedom?
December 7, 1941
American Buddhism: Migrations to Freedom
Buddhism as a National Security Threat
Surveilling Buddhism
Compiling Registries
2. Martial Law
Buddhist Life under Martial Law
Camps in the Land of Aloha
3. Japanese America under Siege
War Hysteria
Tightening the Noose
Executive Order 9066
The Forced “Relocation”
4. Camp Dharma
The Dharma in the High-Security Camps
5. Sangha behind Barbed Wire
Horse Stable Buddhism
“Barrack Churches” in Camp
6. Reinventing American Buddhism
Adapting Buddhism
Sect and Trans-Sect
Interfaith Cooperation
Rooting the Sangha
7. Onward Buddhist Soldiers
Richard Sakakida, American Spy
The Military Intelligence Service
Draftees and Volunteers
The 100th Battalion
The 442nd Regimental Combat Team
8. Loyalty and the Draft
The Loyalty Questionnaire
Tule Lake Segregation Center
Leave Clearance and the Draft
9. Combat in Europe
Dog Tags
Chaplains
Fallen Soldiers
10. The Resettlement
Return to a Hostile West Coast
Temples as Homes
Resettling in Hawai‘i and Japan
Buddhism in America’s Heartland
Epilogue: The Stones Speak: An American Sutra
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

ISBN

9780674986534 (HARDCOVER)

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