There is a letter from internee Edith Shigeishi to Elizabeth Page Harris, a Quaker and a pacifist who led efforts to assist Japanese Americans during the war, praising the generosity of "outsiders" to provide presents for the internees during Christmas.
(Uruguay has had another strong year, notching up a model election, impressive growth and a grown-up welcome to six internees from Guantánamo).
The Government opposed individual compensation even though a study, conducted for the Government by a Toronto accounting firm, estimated the 1986 value of the farms, fishing boats, homes and other property seized from the wartime internees at about $330 million.
The novel references the sinking of the Arandora Star, an English source of shame, when a former cruise ship carrying 800 Italian and German internees from Liverpool to Canada (many rounded up at random in Britain) was torpedoed by a German submarine.
So do the newspaper headlines of the day ("Jap Emperor Repudiates Own Divinity!") and the questions on the loyalty forms distributed in the camps when, in perhaps the ultimate incongruity of the whole relocation fiasco, the United States Army started recruiting volunteers from among the internees.
Working quickly and efficiently, she found herself organising the return of internees from Japanese-run camps.
From there, the internees were transported to one of ten permanent internment camps, which were located in isolated areas in wind-swept deserts or vast swamplands.
The prisoners, or internees, emerge from a huge rust-coloured shed, 30 at a time, into the sun and heat.
Two internees died from falls and one child had drowned.
On 17 January 1972, seven internees escaped from the prison ship HMS Maidstone by swimming to freedom, resulting in them being dubbed the "Magnificent Seven".
