Enmity and Empathy

The stories of Japanese Americans and their allies fighting discrimination in wartime Minnesota highlight how diverse groups stood together amidst the turmoil—a legacy relevant in today’s equally divisive world.

The forced eviction and confinement of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor in 1941 was the federal government’s worst civil rights violation of the twentieth century. The effect in Minnesota was dramatic: only fifty-one Japanese Americans lived in the state in 1940, but by war’s end there were several thousand. 

Drawing on personal interviews, archival sources, and historical literature, scholar and professor Ka Wong explores the courageous struggles of trailblazers who left the incarceration camps and rebuilt their lives in the North Star State, overcoming hostility and hardship along the way. Despite the enmity ignited by war hysteria, bonds of empathy developed between the resettlers and allies who advocated for them personally and professionally. Japanese Americans who transformed both wartime Minnesota and their own lives included college students pursuing higher education, young men and women training at the Military Intelligence Service Language School at Camp Savage and then Fort Snelling, the US Cadet Nurse Corps serving in Rochester hospitals, and entrepreneurial families and individuals in the Twin Cities and beyond. Presenting the inspiring stories of Japanese Americans in Minnesota during World War II, Enmity and Empathy spotlights a hidden chapter in the state’s history.