Duncan Ryūken Williams. American Sutra

Sometimes the most interesting stories arise out of serendipity. In the case of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War, the text that inspired the book was a decades-old diary written by the father of the author’s doctoral supervisor—a man who served as a Buddhist priest at Manzanar, one of ten incarceration camps for Americans of Japanese ancestry. It was sandwiched among letters and dissertation drafts. As the author worked to translate it, he discovered one anecdote among the tens of thousands of stories of Japanese American Buddhist families who endured incarceration during World War II. Written by Duncan Ryūken Williams, American Sutra explores the challenge of identity for Japanese American Buddhists who faced racism and adversity both before and during World War II. Using newly declassified documents and translated materials, diaries, official records, and interviews, Williams examines the effects of World War II on Japanese American Buddhists. Scholarly and nonscholarly accounts of the incarceration camps are numerous, but American Sutra is the first to focus solely on the nexus between faith, racism, and religious freedom for the majority of Japanese Americans who were Buddhists. Both military and government officials considered Buddhist and Shinto priests greater threats to national security than persons of Japanese ancestry who were Christian ministers, especially in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor. It is no surprise that among the first enemy aliens to be identified and detained were Buddhist priests and leaders. Williams frames his narrative from the onset of Japanese Buddhist immigration to Hawaiʻi and the West Coast of the United States in the late nineteenth century to the immediate period following their incarceration. From their beginnings in the United States as cheap farm labor, Japanese American Buddhists were viewed with suspicion. Deprived of land and citizenship rights, they also lost their temples and religious leadership upon forcibly being moved into incarceration camps during the war.

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