Karen M. Inouye has written not only an excellent and well-researched monograph in The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration, but also a timely one. Whilst much has been written about the unjust incarceration of 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry living in the United States during the Second World War, recent events in America highlight just how fragile the historical memory of this period of history is, and how easily it can be misinterpreted and misappropriated for political use. President Donald Trump and his supporters, for example, have repeatedly cited the internment of those of Japanese ancestry as justification for his travel ban on those from predominantly Muslim countries, which shows how little is still understood about what happened on the West Coast during World War II, hence the significance of Inouye's exposition of the long-lasting effects of the trauma of internment.

The Nikkei, as those of Japanese ancestry are collectively known, have had much written about their incarceration during World War II and also the hard-fought redress movement that resulted in a presidential apology from Ronald Reagan and a reparations payment of $20,000 to the approximately 60,000 survivors still alive in 1990. In adding to the historiography of this complex period of history, Inouye highlights the continued effects of internment in America, and how, three-quarters of a century on, the trauma still remains. Inouye takes us on a journey into “a story told and then disremembered, a past recovered and then reburied” which “indicates that wartime incarceration continues to shape the lives of Nikkei in North America, even decades after their wartime experiences” (2). Inouye's book is not merely a historical record, but also an evaluation of the emotional and cultural toll of internment. The effects of detaining American citizens are long-lasting, and trickle down into all aspects of everyday behaviour, even to the extent of only buying certain American brands for fear of appearing unpatriotic.

Of course, the significance of these historical events and their afterlife is not limited only to the Nikkei, as “Executive Order 9066 and its aftermath were not uniquely tied to people of Japanese ancestry or even to anti-Asian sentiment in the twentieth century. Rather, they were the sort of thing that could happen to any vulnerable group in any society under the right circumstances” (25). This quote essentially forms the central tenet of Inouye's thesis: that “empathetic agency is vital for bridging differences,” and that without the Nikkei sharing their personal testimonies, it would be impossible to fully comprehend the magnitude of this violation of civil liberties (78). Inouye is to be lauded not only for considering the afterlife of internment in the United States, but also for comparing and contrasting the experiences of Asian Americans with Asian Canadians. The Long Afterlife builds on the work of historians such as Roger Daniels and Greg Robinson, who have both compared aspects of North American internment. In Robinson's After Camp: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics (2012), for example, new ground was broken in the consideration of the long-term effects of internment, which Inouye has brought further into the present with her sociological analysis.

The Long Afterlife consists of five main chapters. First, Inouye considers how memories can be understood in different ways over time through contextualization. The second chapter focusses on the importance of sharing personal experiences and the power of empathetic agency. Inouye then travels north of the border, to look at the problems experienced by Asian Canadians and the fierce opposition to restitution encountered in Canada. Inouye is well aware of the limitations of such comparisons, but also understands how a transnational narrative can open up new avenues for understanding. Chapter 4 examines the intergenerational dynamics of Nikkei afterlife, particularly focussing on the creation of pilgrimages to former sites of incarceration, and how the third and fourth generations of Nikkei have “retained a deeply emotional, almost sacral, character” in their commemoration of internment (120). Finally, the phenomenon of retroactive recognition for lost education, such as high-school diplomas and college degrees, is discussed in chapter 5. As in the case of restitution, the retrospective awarding of honours has met considerably more opposition in Canada than in America, highlighting some significant differences in the approaches of the two nations to controversial aspects of their history.

Overall, this book is significant for its cultural study of trauma, and should be compulsory reading not only for academics and students of history, but also for anyone whose actions have the potential to affect the lives of generations to come.