Abstract
In Twice Orphaned, Catherine Irwin and her collaborators bring to life a little-known and long-neglected group within the inmate population: children who were interned without families.
In the years before the war, three orphanages served the Japanese American populations of northern and southern California. By 1942, these three institutions were home to nearly a hundred homeless or orphaned Japanese American children. At Manzanar they entered a special part of the camp set aside as Children’s Village. The authors tracked down seventeen former orphans and staff members who had been interned at Children’s Village. The book examines the double abandonment they experienced, first by their parents and then by their country.