Book Review: Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II

Book review of Evelyn Iritani, Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II.

The book review was conducted by Diana Wallens.

For more information on the book:

My interest in the history of World War II (WWII) was largely the result of my upbringing. Both of my grandfathers were veterans of the conflict. My mother, in many ways, passed down her father’s greatest postwar concern to me: despite having served in the Pacific, he had presciently warned her that the Nazis would return on American soil. Consequently, I am fairly well-versed on the origins of the Nazi Party and the war’s trajectory in Europe. Discussions of the Pacific front, however, were comparatively limited to accounts of my grandfather’s experiences. Since then, I have sought to learn more about the war on the Pacific front. Evelyn Iritani’s Safe Passage: The Untold Story of Diplomatic Intrigue, Betrayal, and the Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea During World War II immediately captured my interest as an opportunity to do so, detailing the history of the negotiations behind the release of almost 3,000 Allied civilians detained by the Japanese.

One of the most compelling aspects of Iritani’s book is her discussion of the consequences of the U.S.’s betrayal of its own supposedly democratic values in the negotiations with the Japanese. While Imperial Japan was the clear aggressor in attacking Pearl Harbor and detaining Allied civilians, certain American officials could have made decisions to limit civilian harm in the aftermath. They often did not. For example, J. Edger Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director at the time, deliberately strip-searched imprisoned Japanese officials. This act of racist degradation violated terms of the exchange agreement between the U.S. and Japan.  Then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed an executive order resulting in the unjust interment of numerous Japanese Americans.

Throughout the book, this running theme of American subversion of its principles reminded me of an infamous quote from the novel Animal Farm: “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” Although author Geroge Orwell intended this statement to be a reference to Joseph Stalin’s totalitarian regime, I believe that it can also apply to other countries that promote visions of egalitarianism that belie reality. Before and during WWII, the U.S. was, unlike Stalin’s Soviet Union, not a totalitarian system. Nevertheless, prejudicial officials betrayed the nation’s stated ideals of freedom and equality with their discriminatory decisions. Given this initial observation, it was upsetting but unsurprising to learn that Nazis and their supporters used Americans’ internment policy to justify their treatment of Jewish people.

Unlike the Nazis, however, the tension between Americans’ idealistic rhetoric and the reality for marginalized groups was ever-present.  In perhaps one of the most memorable passages in her book, Iritani describes this dilemma for “repatriated” and/or interned Japanese Americans thusly: “many Japanese knew in their hearts—that their guilt was determined not by what they did, or even what they said, but by who they were. It was one more reminder that America, at least for people with a few drops of Japanese blood in their veins, was a country where justice was determined not by the rule of law but by the fears and hatred of many.”

Another interesting aspect of Iritani’s book was the numerous parallels to modern-day American sociopolitical issues that, while referenced in certain chapters are made explicit in the book’s epilogue. The contradiction between democratic ideals and the lived experiences of not only Japanese-Americans but other marginalized (e.g., religious minorities, immigrants) groups persists to this day.  Although the country no longer has a law similar to the quotas set by the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924, structural racism is still a defining feature of the immigration system. Research from 2021 reveals that modern-day undocumented immigrants of color face more stringent consequences for illegally crossing borders than their predominantly white, European forebears. Iritani herself compares the Supreme Court’s 2018 decision to uphold the travel ban to Muslim-majority countries to the Court’s prior’ justification of Japanese internment (which, ironically, the Chief Justice tried to distance the travel ban ruling from).

Finally, the U.S. government’s kidnapping of Japanese immigrants from Peru (with cooperation from that country’s government officials) would not be the first time that American institutions have meddled in South American affairs. In the 1970s, the U.S. government hastened the collapse of the democratic socialist government in Chile to usher in a right-wing dictatorship that imprisoned and murdered dissidents. In January of this year, in violation of international law, officials staged the kidnapping of the sitting Venezuelan president and his wife under charge of “narco-terrorism.”

The resonant aspect of Safe Passage for me, however, once again brought me back to past arguments about the war itself. Over the years, I heard the same question from media sources as well as individuals I knew personally: why didn’t European Jews “fight back” when the Nazis sent them to die? Since no one present was a survivor or related to one, others’ “answers” were typically ignorant at best or at worst based on antisemitic conspiracy theories. I personally respond with: well, what would YOU have done? I think that most of us like to imagine that we would resist acts of authoritarianism from our home countries’ governments. But, truthfully, we don’t know exactly how we would react to a dire situation until it occurs. I immediately recalled these moments when I read that people who heard the story of Don Hasuike (a young Japanese-American sent to an internment camp and then “repatriated” back to Japan as part of a prisoner exchange) asked him why he and his family didn’t fight back.

At the end of the book, the author thankfully refuses to give the readers closure with a tale of justice served. Throughout the prisoner exchange process, the U.S. and Japanese governments did (sometimes deliberately, sometimes unintentionally) immeasurable harm to civilians. If there is any solace to be found, it is in the stories of those that were able to find family and rebuild their lives after the exchange. Amidst numerous attacks from the executive branch, the Supreme Court, and other elected officials on Americans’ Constitution protections, I concur with Iritani: “Gripsholm’s children refused to give up on America.” Given the experiences of those who’ve sacrificed their livelihoods and lives in support of America’s stated democratic ideals, resistance to attacks on our democracy today is the least we can do in their memories and is more important than ever.