The Block Manager

Born in the United States to Japanese immigrant parents, Janet saw her California life overturned after Pearl Harbor. Her family was among the thousands of Japanese Americans on the West Coast who were sent to incarceration camps. Her fluent English and Japanese earned her the role of block manager.

During the war, Janet was moved among three different camps. She married and gave birth to a child in that period. Later, she followed her husband to post-war Japan, where a famine left her own survival in doubt. Through every hardship she kept her sense of herself as an American and her hope of rejoining her relatives in the United States.

The memoir shows how unpredictable life behind the camp fences could be, and it illustrates gaman, the quiet endurance with dignity practiced by the detainees.