Governing of Men

Commander Leighton is a psychiatrist and anthropologist who was assigned to go to the Japanese Relocation Center at Poston, Arizona, and “apply the methods of social science” to that community-find out in terms of human relationships what was working well and why, what was going wrong and why, and attempt to draw general principles from that experience. He fulfilled his mission brilliantly, and his manuscript account was immediately hailed by those who read it as one of the most thoughtful and truly literate government reports ever written.

Under the sponsorship of the American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations, Commander Leighton has prepared this fascinating book from the material which went into his report. The first part, illustrated with striking photographs, is a dramatic yet genuinely “clinical” account of the strike at Poston and the attitudes tensions and frustrations of both administrators and administered. It inquires deeply into the motivations and reactions of the people who made up the Poston community. In the next section, general principles and recommendations are presented- and this material is drawn from other sources as well as Poston.

The book thus appeals to a wide variety of readers: Army and Navy officers facing problems of civil administration, citizens interested in minority groups and race relations in the U.S., students of public opinion and of industrial relations in government, industry, and labor, sociologists, psychiatrists. Moreover, it is written with such skill, and is so rich in dramatic illustration of how man’s mind works, that it is also unreservedly recommended to the general reader, whether or not he has any active concern either with Japanese-American problems or with “the governing of men.”

Originally published in 1945.

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