Song of Anger: Tales of Tule Lake (book)

Reflections and observations of a social worker in Tule Lake segregation center during World War II.

The introduction by Naomi Hirahara explains that Barney Shallit was a social worker who worked at Tule Lake segregation center, and that this book is a collection of short stories he wrote based on his experiences and observations while he was there.

Shallit was motivated to take the job at Tule Lake out of a desire to do something to alleviate the injustice he believed Japanese Americans were being subjected to. The seventeen chapters cover discreet episodes featuring both the white staff and Japanese American inmates. The stories include portraits of other community analysts, James Okamoto (who is known for being shot by guards), a mentally ill woman, inmates who were held in the stockades, Japanese Americans who worked with him in the welfare department, and his own ambivalence about working at a concentration camp.

Barney Shallit had received a Masters in Social Work from the University of Washington when he decided to apply for a position at Tule Lake as his way of counteracting what he viewed as the injustice of the wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans.