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American Sutra - A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Hardcover)
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American Sutra - A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War (Hardcover)
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Winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion 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 Ryuken 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 Gikyo 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.
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