See my previous, I also recommend it.
Also, the book documents how a lot of 1st generation Japanese would get sent back for education in Japan, an education that included a large dose of Japanese militarism, such that there was a real question about their loyalties. While this and the other things revealed in the book do not justify all that was done, it makes the whole issue much more complex. Trying to simplify it down by saying “it was all because racist white farmers wanted their land”, as some are doing here, ignores the very real issues that MAGIC reveals.
“Also, the book documents how a lot of 1st generation Japanese would get sent back for education in Japan, an education that included a large dose of Japanese militarism, such that there was a real question about their loyalties.”
Some neisei had maintained close ties to the ancestral homeland and a few had a conflict of loyalties. I remember a caller to George Putnam’s radio program who had been a Marine fighting in the Pacific. In one battle he encountered a Japanese Imperial soldier who had been one of his classmates in high school in Los Angeles. Surely a rare occurrence but in the atmosphere of a major war even one event like that would quickly become infamous.
My copy of MAGIC just arrived and I am settling in to read it shortly. :)