The First to Cry Down Injustice?: Western Jews and Japanese Removal During WWII Review

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(More customer reviews)Eisenberg argues that West Coast Jews were between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, Jews were members of an historically persecuted minority (a statement that becomes even more true following the Holocaust) that fought against persecution and prejudice. On the other hand, they were living on the west coast, which was ground zero for Pearl Harbor and a fervent anti-Japanese mindset. Silence, Eisenberg says, was the only safe middle ground the jews could take; in essence, they didnt support or confront the internment.
Although her sources are relatively good, this book does have its weak areas. Why did she address the issue of the in-betweenness of Jews and not Japanese Americans? Why did her coverage of the print media's reaction virtually ignore publications like the Nation, New Republic, and other liberal publications? To be fair, these are relatively small issues. The one hole in her arguement is that I didn't see anywhere in the book where a Jew actually *said* that they were being silent because of their situation. Rather, Eisenberg assigns a reasoning to a personally unexplained silence. While her arguement is strong, that one point does tend to bother.
Overall, this is a great book and I definately recommend it.

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The First to Cry Down Injustice explores the range of responses from Jews in the Pacific West to the removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII. While it is often assumed that American Jews_because of a commitment to fighting prejudice_would have taken a position against this discriminatory policy, the treatment of Japanese Americans was largely ignored by national Jewish groups and liberal groups. For those on the West Coast, however, proximity to the evacuation made it difficult to ignore. Conflicting impulses on the issue_the desire to speak out against discrimination on the one hand, but to support a critical wartime policy on the other_led most western Jewish organizations and community newspapers to remain tensely silent. Some Jewish leaders did speak out against the policy because of personal relationships with Japanese Americans and political convictions. Yet a leading California Jewish organization made a significant contribution to propaganda in favor of mass removal. Eisenberg places these varied responses into the larger context of the western ethnic landscape and argues that they were linked to, and help to illuminate, the identity of western Jews both as westerners and as Jews.