Contact Clock Question Basket Search User Store Facebook Mail Instagram Twitter

Questions 27 & 28

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  

€ 36.14 

ISBN: 9781644453810

In February 1942, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbour, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order authorising the secretary of war to remove 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes on the West Coast and corral them into inland concentration camps. To be considered for release, they were required to answer the so-called loyalty questionnaire. Question 27 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 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 from the time of 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 in its aftermath. Yamashita mixes fact with fiction and layers genres from James Bond movies to haiku to oral history, transfiguring an enormity of archival research into a chorus of stories. With her signature wit and aplomb, she gives voice to labourers, artists, scholars, informants, and activists who, over three generations, defined an immigrant community.

448 pages.

Not Yet Published.

Printed on or after 22/06/26. Please note dispatch may take 5-10 days after publication date.
A separate order should be placed for this item. If you order this along with other items, your entire order will be held and despatched when complete.

Date of Publication: 22/06/2026

Cover of Questions 27 & 28 - Karen Tei Yamashita - 9781644453810Hardback

Questions 27 & 28 also appears in these Categories:

Original Fiction

Forthcoming Books