This books feels good in your hands and is fun for a short glance or engrossing enought for a long read. It traces the history of Japanese Americans on the West Coast specifically during the Interwar period before they got sent to internment camps. The book makes a claim for National Landmark status for several buildings important to Japanese Americans. It explores the history of Japanese in this country -- Issei and Nissei -- through the descriptions of their bathhouses, their theaters, their temples and their schools. I did not believe it could be possible to feel even more indignant and angry about the internment process and sheer extralegality of what was done to many Japanese Americans in the name of national security, but looking at the pictures of what is in some ways a lost culture evokes a poignancy that is almost surprising.