American dreams derailed: Japanese railroad and mine communities of the Interior West

This study examines the history of Japanese-American railroad and mining communities in the Interior West. While focused on World War II, the study surveys the entire range of that history. It begins with a re-examination of the large influx of Issei industrial workers into the region during the early 1900s. It then traces the development of three basic types of Japanese industrial communities that persisted through the 1920s and 1930s, concentrating on families at the core of those settlements.; The main objective has been to explore and describe the dynamics behind the mass dismissals and unofficial “evacuations” that destroyed most of these communities during the early weeks of the war. In a related effort, the author has sought to document some of the human responses and family experiences that resulted from the combined disasters. Research has produced clear evidence that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Army's Western Defense Command, and the Office of Civilian Defense played significant roles in this unfolding drama, which dispels the notion that private companies decided on their own to fire the Japanese crews. These findings have wider applications for the study of federal policies that influenced Japanese-American wartime experiences in the “free” Interior West. The study proceeds to investigate the long struggle for government redress waged by the victims of the mass firings in the 1990s. This section illustrates how the railroad-mine redress movement helped to repair some damage caused by the war and restore a certain sense of community.; The author utilizes a wide range of primary sources, including numerous interviews and a wealth of government and corporate records pertaining to the wartime firings and the redress struggle. He argues that the history of these communities, and these “American Dreams Derailed,” must be seen as a related but separate and unique chapter in the history of the Japanese Americans.