Adios to Tears

Adios to Tears is the very personal story of Seiichi Higashide (1909-97), whose life in three countries was shaped by a bizarre and little-known episode in the history of World War II. Born in Hokkaido, Higashide emigrated to Peru in 1931. By the late 1930s he was a shop keeper and community leader in the provincial town of Ica, but following the outbreak of World War II, he -- along with other Latin American Japanese -- was seized by police and forcibly deported to the United States. He was interned behind barbed wire at the Immigration and Naturalization Service facility in Crystal City, Texas, for more than two years.

After his release, Higashide elected to stay in the U.S. and eventually became a citizen. For years, he was a leader in the effort to obtain redress from the American government for the violation of the human rights of the Peruvian Japanese internees. In 1981 he testified before the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.

Higashide's moving memoir was translated from Japanese into English and Spanish through the efforts of his eight children, and was first published in 1993. This second edition includes a new Foreword by C. Harvey Gardiner, professor emeritus of history at Southern Illinois University and author of Pawns in a Triangle of Hate: The Peruvian Japanese and the United States; a new Epilogue by Julie Small, cochair of Campaign for Justice-Redress Now for Japanese Latin Americans; and a new Preface by Elsa H. Kudo, eldest daughter of Seiichi Higashide.