That Damned Fence: The Literature of Japanese American Prison Camps Test Bank

Unlock the Hidden Stories of Japanese American Prison Camps

Until the late twentieth century, relatively few Americans knew that the United States government forcibly detained nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II.

A New Perspective on a National Tragedy

That Damned Fence, titled after a poem written by a Japanese American held at the Minidoka camp in Idaho, draws on the creative work of the internees themselves to cast new light on this historical injustice.

Exploring the Experiences of Japanese American Inmates

Heather Hathaway explores the experiences of inmates in five camps—Topaz in Utah; Granada/Amache in Colorado; Rohwer and Jerome in Arkansas; and Tule Lake in northern California—each with their own literary magazines, such as TREK, All Aboard, Pulse, The Pen, Magnet, and The Tulean Dispatch.

• Conditions in the camps varied dramatically, as did their environments, ranging from sweltering swamplands and sun-blasted desert to frigid mountain terrain.
• The inhabitants of each camp, with some dominated by farmers from California’s Central Valley and others filled with professionals from the San Francisco Bay area.
• The attitudes of camp administrators; some deemed the plan a mistake from the outset while others believed their captives to be a significant threat to national security.

That Damned Fence reveals the anger and humor, and the deep despair and steadfast resilience with which Japanese Americans faced their wartime incarceration.