Wherever I Go, I Will Always Be a Loyal American

Yoon Pak is Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Wherever I Go I'll Always Be a Loyal American is the story of how the Seattle public schools responded to the news of its Japanese American (Nisei) students' internment upon the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 14, 1942. Drawing upon previously untapped letters and compositions written by the students themselves during the time in which the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the internment order took place, Pak explores how the schools and their students attempted to cope with evident contradiction and dissonance in democracy and citizenship. Emerging from the school district's tradition of emphasizing equality of all races and the government's forced evacuation orders based on racial exclusion, this dissonance became real and lived experience for Nisei school children, whose cognitive dissonance is best revealed in poignant phrases like "I am and will always be an American citizen."

Acknowledgements Definition of Terms Preface Introduction Chapter 1: Making Sense of Dissonance: Students' Response to Executive Order 9066 Chapter 2: Setting the Stage: Seattle's Japanese America Before World War II Chapter 3: Looking Backward: Americanization for Loyalty and Patriotism, 1916-1930 Chapter 4: Americanization Broadened: Education for Tolerance and Interculturalism Chapter 5: Tenuous Citizenship: Schools, Students and Community Respond to War Chapter 6: Dissonance Embodied: personal Accounts on the Eve of Incarceration Conclusion Note on Method and Sources Appendix: Chronology of Events Affecting Japanese Americans Nationally from December 7, 1941 to June 7, 1942 Bibliography Index