Exiled to Motown: A Community History of Japanese Americans in Detroit - Paperbackby Scott Kurashige (Author) During World War II, Detroit emerged as a relative space of freedom for Nisei permitted by the War Relocation Authority to leave sites of incarceration but banned from returning to their homes in the exclusion zones. These Nisei connected with an existing Japanese American community that had been formed by immigrant trailblazers who came to Detroit in the early twentieth century to be part of the booming auto industry.