Numerous historians have chronicled and investigated various aspects of the incarceration of over 100,000 persons of Japanese ancestry in the US during WW II. While many works reference the A-B-C lists used by federal and military personnel to track and classify supposed enemy aliens prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it is often as a preamble to the creation of camps run by the Wartime Civil Control Administration and War Relocation Authority. As Johnson and Simms point out, far less of the literature follows the nearly 20,000 Issei who became victims of custodial detention beginning on December 7, 1941. This volume serves to rectify that deficiency by unveiling Camp Livingston's all-but-forgotten role as an internment site for over 1,000 men. Using a combination of government documents, letters, diary entries, artwork, and oral histories, the authors have painstakingly reconstructed not only the history of the camp itself, but the experiences of the internees and their families as well. While meticulously researched, this is also not a purely dispassionate and objective history; it often connects to its subjects on an almost personal level. While endnotes abound, a slight drawback is the absence of a full bibliography. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

Beneath Heavy Pines brings to light, for the first time, one of the most significant yet untold stories of the WWII Japanese American internment. A definitive history of the Camp Livingston Internment Camp in Louisiana, Johnson and Simms tell the story of unjust dislocation, family separation, and incarceration from the perspective of those who experienced the racial and religious animus of the times. Skillfully blending government documents with diaries, letters, and artwork of the internees themselves, Beneath Heavy Pines is a must read for anyone interested in wartime incarceration of those deemed enemy aliens.

Duncan Ryuken Williams, Director of the USC Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture

Beneath Heavy Pines is a necessary intervention in the study of Japanese Americans during the war. Using oral histories, archival experience, and a rich collection of personal narratives that take the reader from Hawai?i to Louisiana, Johnson and Simms do more than fill a gap in the collective memory of World War II: they present a powerful argument for using diverse research methodologies to explore the realities of life in the internment center at Camp Livingston while reminding historians that there is still much to learn about wartime detention.

Steph Hinnershitz, Senior Historian, The National WWII Museum

We all know big stories like D-Day or Pearl Harbor, but we don't really understand what happened until we learn about the small stories of real people swept up by those major events. Hayley Johnson and Sarah Simms wade into the deluge that was the unjust incarceration of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII and use their research skills to rescue the lives of people such as Rev. Buntetsu Miyamoto of Hawai?i and the Kohara family of Louisiana. In this book, we see Johnson and Simms working as intrepid curators of memory resuscitating the amazing stories of ordinary people, who would otherwise be forgotten in the ruins of an old Army fort in the pine forests of Louisiana.

George Tanabe, University of Hawai?i

“History detectives” Johnson and Simms, both university librarians, have skillfully mined the available sources to coax dusty archives into vibrant life. Those details, plus interviews with survivors from as far away as Hawai'i, present a fascinating narrative featuring the U.S. Army's Camp Livingston, Louisiana, especially the events surrounding its use as a World War II internment camp for men born in Japan. U.S. residents ineligible for citizenship because of their Japanese birth, they were first unjustifiably labeled as “enemy aliens,” then ripped from their families and eventually sent to Camp Livingston. This sympathetic, often poignant, account includes some of the men's tanka (31-syllable) poetry, expressing their anguish at parting from their families. The authors also describe the horrific, deeply troubling, and little-known U.S. sinking of the repatriation ship, Awa Maru; among the 2,000-plus passengers who died were two Camp Livingston internees hoping to reunite with their families in Japan.

Priscilla Wegars, author of Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp

Sarah Simms and Hayley Johnson's book Beneath Heavy Pines reshapes our understanding of the fate of Japanese Americas during World War II by telling the tragic story of the 1,000 people of Japanese ancestry from across the western hemisphere who were rounded up, sent to distant Louisiana, and confined under guard at Camp Livingston. Simms and Johnson have produced a model of historical scholarship, mixing archival research with individual stories at a very human level.

Greg Robinson, author of By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans