Chinese and Japanese immigrants have been coming to the Pacific Northwest since the nineteenth century, attracted by the high demand for labor. Many Japanese arrived in the region after the United States annexed Hawaii in 1898. However, although Japanese Americans, as well as Chinese Americans, have a long history in the northwest and in other regions of the United States, many decades were to pass before mainstream America took any notice of the literature produced by these immigrant groups. Before 1970, few works of fiction and poetry by Japanese Americans had been published. But this did not mean that nothing had been written. In fact, Japanese Americans had a thriving literary culture in the 1930s, publishing their work in their own literary magazines. They continued to produce literary journals when imprisoned in internment camps during World War II, although everything they wrote was subject to censure by...