| NOTA |
(★)(1.Among Vietnam veterans, Japanese Americans have remained largely silent about their wartime experiences. Until now. In this groundbreaking book, many of them talk for the first time about their struggle for identity in the US and how this affected their participation in the Vietnam War. Toshio Whelchel interviewed over one hundred veterans in the course of his work, and here he presents the most revealing and moving of their stories. Some of them describe life in the suburbs of 1950s´ and 1960s´ America, where membership of gangs like the Algonquins and the Black Juans was a natural forerunner to enlistment in the military. Others detail the overt and brutal discrimination meted out by drill instructors during training, and yet others the ambivalence with which they viewed their Vietnamese´enemy´. All, however, illustrate the profound influence of the war on their lives : how they dealt with routine racism, their growing politicization, and the struggle to reintegrate themselves into American society after the war. 2.Toshio Whelchel is a first-generation Japanese American living in Los Angeles. he served four years with the US Marine Corps from 1977 to 1981 and is currently researching an oral history of homeless Vietnam veterans in Southern California.) |
BASE de DATOS, Biblioteca del Centro Cultural de la Embajada de Japon
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