In the wake of wartime panic that followed the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor, more than 100,000 Japanese Americans residing along the West Coast of the United States were uprooted from their homes and their communities and banished to internment camps throughout the country. Through personal documents, art, and propaganda, Only What We Could Carry expresses through words, art, and haunting recollections, the fear, confusion and anger of the camp experience. The only anthology of its kind, Only What We Could Carry is an emotional and intellectual testament to the dignity, spirit and strength of the Japanese American internees.

Ben Iijima, The Day We left Editorials in the Wake of Pearl Harbor Clay H.Musick, Eyewitness to Pearl Harbor Kay Uno, Pearl Harbor Remembered Yoshiko Uchida, from Desert Exile Isohei Hatashita, Letters from a Justice Department Camp Mine Okubo, from Farewell to Manzanar Photo Essay: How I Spent the War A far Country: Poems from the Arkansas Camps George Takei, from To the Stars Eleanor Gerard Sekerak, A Teacher at Topaz Stanlea Hayami, A Young Nisei's Diary