Asian American Comparative Collection: Publications

To order, please prepay your order by sending a check or money order (made payable to Asian American Comparative Collection or AACC; sorry, no credit cards) to AACC, University of Idaho, 875 Perimeter Drive, MS 1111, Moscow, ID 83844-1111. All prices include tax, postage to U.S. addresses, and handling. For foreign addresses, please inquire.


Polly Bemis: The Life and Times of a Chinese American Pioneer, by Priscilla Wegars, is a full-length, thoroughly researched biography of one of Idaho's most famous pioneers. Polly Bemis, the mistakenly named “Lalu Nathoy” of books and film, was forcibly brought to the United States, and to Idaho Territory, in 1872 when she was just eighteen. In 1894 she married a Euroamerican man, Charlie Bemis, and they moved to a mining claim on the remote Salmon River; Charlie died in 1922 and Polly died in 1933. Since her death, Polly Bemis’s life has been greatly romanticized. Supposedly, she was a prostitute, “Hong King” was her Chinese owner, and Charlie Bemis “won her in a poker game.” Not one of these statements is true. Polly’s life was genuinely fascinating, and it is time to both celebrate the known facts about her and allow the stereotypical, undocumented legends to die out. 560 pages with photos, endnotes, index, and bibliography. Pb, $30.00; if you wish it autographed, please specify recipient. All author's royalties benefit the AACC.

Chinese American Death Rituals: Respecting the Ancestors, edited by Sue Fawn Chung and Priscilla Wegars. Why is there sometimes a chicken in a Chinese funeral procession? Why are Chinese Americans bringing the remains of their ancestors to the US for reburial? Why would Chinese Americans place coins in the coffin or in the mouth, ears, hands, or eyes of their deceased? Why would they leave food at the grave site and burn paper replicas of cell phones and other objects there? Chung and Wegars and a selection of expert contributors answer these questions and more in Chinese American Death Rituals. For a review in the Asian Reporter, see http://www.asianreporter.com/reviews/2006/18-06chineseamerican.htm. Contents: Introduction, by Sue Fawn Chung and Priscilla Wegars; Chapter 1, "'What We Didn’t Understand': A History of Chinese Death Ritual in China and California," by Wendy L. Rouse; Chapter 2, "On Dying American: Cantonese Rites for Death and Ghost-Spirits in an American City," by Paul G. Chace; Chapter 3, "Archaeological Excavations at Virginiatown’s Chinese Cemeteries," by Wendy L. Rouse; Chapter 4, "Venerate These Bones: Chinese American Funerary and Burial Practices as Seen in Carlin, Elko County, Nevada," by Sue Fawn Chung, Fred P. Frampton, and Timothy W. Murphy; Chapter 5, "Respecting the Dead: Chinese Cemeteries and Burial Practices in the Interior Pacific Northwest," by Terry Abraham and Priscilla Wegars; Chapter 6, "Remembering Ancestors in Hawai'i," by Sue Fawn Chung and Reiko Neizman; Chapter 7, "The Chinese Mortuary Tradition in San Francisco Chinatown," by Linda Sun Crowder; Chapter 8, "Old Rituals in New Lands: Bringing the Ancestors to America," by Roberta S. Greenwood; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index, 320 pages. Pb, $35.00; if you wish it autographed, please specify recipient. All authors' royalties benefit the AACC. Published in 2005 by AltaMira Press.

As Rugged as the Terrain: CCC “Boys,” Federal Convicts, and World War II Alien Internees Wrestle with a Mountain Wilderness, by Priscilla Wegars with a Foreword by Dick Hendricks, explores some intriguing history of Idaho’s wild and scenic Lochsa River. In 1893 this site, at turbulent Canyon Creek, was a footnote in the saga of the ill-fated Carlin hunting party. Next, in 1933, it held nearly 200 tent-dwelling Civilian Conservation Corps recruits, most from New York State. The antics of these “city slickers” provide colorful insights into CCC camps housing young men far from home. In 1935 the site became Federal Prison Camp No. 11, a road-building facility for convicts mostly from the Leavenworth, Kansas, penitentiary. The authorities stressed rehabilitation, rather than punishment, but because the camp was not fenced, a few escapes occurred, some quite thrilling. The prison camp closed in May 1943, and Japanese detainees at the Kooskia Internment Camp continued road construction for two more years; see Priscilla Wegars’ Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp (2010). Several chapters in Rugged continue the Japanese internees’ story, and compare it with the experiences of Italian and German internees in the vicinity. 393 + xxxviii (431) pages, 110 illustrations, plus notes, appendices, bibliography, index. Pb, $25.00; if you wish it autographed, please specify recipient.  All author's royalties benefit the AACC.










The long-awaited account of Idaho's World War II Kooskia Internment Camp is now available. Titled Imprisoned in Paradise: Japanese Internee Road Workers at the World War II Kooskia Internment Camp, by Priscilla Wegars, with a foreword by Michiko Midge Ayukawa, it describes a unique, virtually forgotten, World War II detention and road building facility that was located on the remote, wild, and scenic Lochsa River in north central Idaho at the site of an earlier CCC camp and a former federal prison camp above Lowell, Idaho. Between mid-1943 and mid-1945 the Kooskia (KOOS-key) camp held an all-male contingent of some 265 so-called "enemy aliens" of Japanese ancestry. Most came from 21 states and 2 territories, but others were from Mexico; some were even kidnapped from Panama and Peru. Two alien internee doctors, an Italian and later a German, provided medical services; 25 Caucasian employees included several women; and a Japanese American man censored the mail. Despite having committed no crimes, but suspected of potential sabotage, these noncitizen U.S. residents of Japanese descent had been interned elsewhere in the U.S. following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. They volunteered for transfer to the Kooskia Internment Camp and earned wages for helping build the Lewis-Clark Highway, now Highway 12, between Lewiston, Idaho, and Missoula, Montana, supervised by U.S. Bureau of Public Roads employees. Whereas some of the all-male internees held camp jobs, most of these paid volunteers were construction workers, operating heavy equipment or laboring with picks and shovels. The internees found this area of the Idaho wilderness to be a welcome change from the barbed wire of the Santa Fe Detention Center and other places where they were previously confined. For example, Yoshito Kadotani, a landscape gardener from Santa Cruz, California, called it "… a paradise in mountains!," saying, "It reminds me so much of Yosemite National Park." Knowledge of their rights under the 1929 Geneva Convention empowered the Kooskia internees to successfully challenge administrative mistreatment, thereby regaining much of the self-respect they had lost by being so unjustly interned. 323 + xxxiv (357) pages, 112 illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography. Pb, $25.00; if you wish it autographed, please specify recipient.  All author's royalties benefit the AACC.