Questions 27 & 28

A masterful polyvocal history of Japanese Americans before, during, and after World War II

In 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt issued an executive order authorizing the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and place them in concentration camps. To be considered for release, they were required to answer the so-called “loyalty questionnaire.” Question 27 of the form asked the inmates—who had been imprisoned without cause by the US military—whether they were willing to serve in combat for the US military. Question 28 asked them—many of whom were American citizens who had never visited Japan—to renounce allegiance to the Japanese emperor. Answering these questions caused volatile divisions within the camps, tore families and friends apart, and had lasting repercussions in the decades postwar.

Questions 27 & 28 reaches backward and forward in time from the questionnaire, chronicling the individuals who arrived in the US from Japan at the turn of the century, their children who came of age during war and incarceration, and their descendants who lived and sought justice in its aftermath. Karen Tei Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring years of archival research into a chorus of stories. With signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to laborers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.