![muller_american[9845].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f068eee3eddcd7ab633d36e/1594817068991-7MOT3PEJGA1RNVNB5T1D/muller_american%5B9845%5D.jpg)
Who Is “Disloyal”? What Is “Disloyalty”?
“At last, Eric Muller shines new light on the U.S. government’s failed attempt to define ‘loyalty’ among a supposed ‘enemy race’ during wartime. His detailed examination of the judgment of tens of thousands of those of Japanese ancestry, including my family, incarcerated during World War II, is an important historical lesson we must never forget and an injustice we must never repeat.”
— Former Congressman and Cabinet Secretary Norman Y. Mineta
“[Muller does] an exemplary job of unearthing new archival materials and shedding a substantial amount of light on a well-studied topic.”
— Naoko Shibusawa, author of America's Geisha Ally: Reimagining the Japanese Enemy
Based entirely on new archival research, American Inquisition is the only book in the literature on Japanese American incarceration that examines the complex inner workings of the most draconian system of loyalty screening the American government has ever deployed against its own citizens.
At a time when the nation again finds itself beset by worries about an “enemy within” identifiable by race or religion, this book offers crucial lessons from a recent and disastrous history.
From the reviews of American Inquisition
“The story of how Japanese Americans were corralled into internment camps is tragic and familiar; less known is the story of how they were released from camps. Eric Muller helps fill this void by carefully describing how government bureaucracies determined the ‘loyalty’ of Japanese Americans. . . . Along the way, he provides revealing glimpses of how racism and politics, more than military necessity, guided their . . . inevitable release.”
— Jerry Kang, co-author of Race, Rights, and Reparation: Law of the Japanese American Internment
“That the work focuses on the government bureaucracy and its handling of internment rather than the more dramatic experiences of the internees themselves does not make the story dry. Muller finds heroes and villains in the government’s attempts to define loyalty and incarcerate those who failed to meet its confused and constantly changing standards.”
— Judy Kutulas, author of The American Civil Liberties Union and the Making of Modern Liberalism
“While the wartime experiences of Japanese Americans have received disproportionate scholarly attention, Muller’s perceptive study demonstrates that important work in this area remains. . . . American Inquisition provides a close and nuanced reading of the hunt for Japanese American disloyalty during World War II that erred especially in judging Japanese Americans on their degree of assimilation and racial identity.”
— Allan W. Austin, author of From Concentration Camps to Campus
An interview about American Inquisition on public radio in Seattle, Washington, 2008.