Tag Archives: Japanese American imprisonment during WWII

December 7, 2012 · 8:05 am

I Survived the Bombing of Pearl Harbor, 1941 by Lauren Tashis, illustrated by Scott Dawson

I Survived the Bombing of Peark Harbor, 1941Today – December 7, 2012 – is the 71st anniversary of the “date which will live in infamy,” as named by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in describing the assault on the Pearl Harbor Naval Base and launching the United States into World War II. That the attackers were Japanese would eventually lead to Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 9066 which imprisoned some 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent.

In less than a hundred pages, Lauren Tarshis manages to tell a riveting story and populate the slim title (perfectly proportioned for even the most hesitant middle grade readers!) with resonating historical and sociological content. Danny and his single mother are new residents of Pearl City, Hawai’i, where his mother works as a nurse at Hickam Air Force Base in Pearl Harbor; she’s thankful to be in “the most beautiful place on earth,” while Danny just wishes they could go back to their old New York City apartment and be with his best friend Finn. Even as Danny’s mother is adamant that this “fresh start” will keep her son “away from danger and trouble,” Danny is plotting a stowaway journey home. And then the bombs fall: Danny’s plans for escape turn into a fight for survival, not just for himself but for the friends he has begun to make, including the brave officer trying too hard to win his mother’s affections, and his Japanese American neighbors whose irresistible little boy Aki is already devotedly attached to Danny.

As the author behind Scholastic’s I Survived series – ”[e]ach … tells a terrifying and thrilling story from history, through the eyes of a boy who lived to tell the tale,” her website explains – Tarshis must be an incredibly quick study, producing what seems to be two titles a year highlighting diverse historical moments. If Pearl Harbor, the fourth in seven titles thus far, is any indication, Tarshis is especially thorough. Into the heart-thumping survival story that lasts some 48 hours (with a final Christmas Day chapter that serves almost as an epilogue), Tarshis weaves in gang influence within the FBI, questions of identity, anti-Japanese backlash and fear, Japanese American imprisonment without just cause, a good old love story, and a young boy’s coming-of-age from numbness to fear to feeling. For the further curious, Tarshis’ after-story appendix is filled with historical notes, a tucked-in update on Danny’s mom and her officer, a detailed time line, and resources to find out more (including a few titles detailing true stories of real Pearl Harbor children).

Of course when handing this book to your reluctant reader, he or she doesn’t need to know anything more than this is just a really good story. Enough said!

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2011

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October 15, 2012 · 11:27 am

Requiem by Frances Itani

While I can hardly estimate the many, many books I’ve read about the Japanese American experience during World War II, I know few details about what happened to Japanese Canadians. The lone fact that looms is that like their Japanese American counterparts on the West Coast, more than 20,000 Japanese Canadians along Canada’s west coast were also rounded up and imprisoned without cause to harsh camps. The one title I’ve read that puts a face to the unjust experiences of our northern neighbors is the modern classic, Obasan (and its middle grade version, Naomi’s Road) by Joy Kogawa. Until now …

Intentional or not, Frances Itani – whose best-known title, Deafening, won the 2004 Commonwealth Book Prize for Best Book (Caribbean and Canada) among numerous other honors – seems to be channeling Kogawa in her Requiem. In my own reading (alternating with Brian Nishii’s excellent narration stuck in my ears when the book was not in hand), Auntie Aya’s appearance in Itani’s latest provided the initial trigger: the eponymous Obasan in Kogawa’s autobiographical novel is also an Aunt Aya, whose full name is Ayako Nakane. Both titles also share a counterpoint structure, shifting between the defining events of World War II and a contemporary examination of things past.

At the risk of committing literary heresy, Requiem is the better novel. I pause for a moment in anticipation of the roaring objections to come …

Bin Okuma – who throughout his life has also answered to Oda Binosuke, Okuma Binosuke, Bin Oda, Ben Okuma – is newly widowed, his beloved wife having suddenly died of a stroke at just 49. Lena was the historian, the one who pieced together Bin’s family story, even as he tried to bury his anger, his melancholy, his unresolved mourning. Loading the car with the family dog Basil – quite the character in his own right – Bin literally journeys into his past, driving through his Canadian homeland, seeking the remote prison camp where he spent four years of his childhood, where his family was splintered and remade, where he might finally confront the man he calls “First Father.”

So aptly titled, Itani creates a resonating symphony of intertwined lives – separating, flowing, diverging, merging. Even as she captures moments of inexplicable violence (a father scarring his son with a careless toss), of systematic betrayal (reducing a man’s worth to just $18.85 for nothing more than the randomness of his ancestry), of shocking tragedy (a family giving away an extra son), Itani always remains in subtle control, modulating each detail with careful mastery.

Dare I say … the result warrants a (tear-stained, breath-taking) ovation.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2011 (Canada), 2012 (United States)

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June 22, 2012 · 4:12 pm

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling

Sylvia Mendez and Aki Munemitsu shared the same yellow bedroom as young children, just not at the same time. While Aki and her family were imprisoned in Poston, Arizona during World War II for no other reason than their Japanese heritage, Sylvia and her family leased the Munemitsus’ asparagus farm in Westminster, California and lived in their home.

Winifred Conkling debuts her first novel for children (after 30+ adult nonfiction titles) based on real events: Sylvia and Aki are not only real people, but they’re also everyday heroes, too.

Sylvia and her brothers, the children of a Mexican immigrant father and a Puerto Rican American mother, were barred from attending their all-white neighborhood school. They were sent to the “Mexican” school further away from their home, for an education that was definitely separate but hardly equal. Sylvia’s father Gonzalo eventually sued the Westminster School District in what would become a landmark case that became known as the “‘Brown v. Board of Education for Mexicans’” and ended segregation in California in 1947. [Small irony: Brown v. Board didn't get decided until seven years later in 1954 which means Brown v. Board should really be known as the "Mendez v. Westminster School District for everyone else"!!]

While Sylvia and her family fought for equal rights on the outside, Aki, her brother, and their mother spent World War II in the Sonoran Desert with hardly any rights at all. They lived for two years without Aki’s father, who was arrested without cause and separately incarcerated. When the family was finally reunited and released after war’s end, they were some of the lucky few who were able to return to their pre-War homes intact, thanks to the Mendez family who took good care of their farm.

Sylvia and Aki became friends exchanging letters (they met briefly at Poston when Sylvia’s father hand-delivered the lease payment, rightfully not trusting the postal service into the prison camp); Conkling adds in her edifying  ”Afterword” (filled with Mendez and Munemitsu family updates, historical overview, and an extensive appendix for further reading) that Sylvia and Aki “remain friends to this day.”

Presented in chapters that alternate between the two girls’ voices, Conkling deftly uses small details to emphasize the parallel trajectory of their wartime lives – from the special ethnic-specific dolls both girls cherish, to the wire fences that surround both the run-down “Mexican” school and the Poston prison, to their civil rights that were unjustly compromised, to the resilience that pulls both girls and their families through difficult, challenging times. While Sylvia and Aki’s stories might separately seem familiar (civil rights and internment titles are easily found in most libraries), Conkling overlaps and intertwines their narratives to create a uniquely resonating testimony of committed triumph.

Readers: Middle Grade

Published: 2011

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April 24, 2012 · 9:45 am

Children of Manzanar edited by Heather C. Lindquist

The PR materials that arrived with this remarkable title contains one of the most effective descriptions of the Japanese American imprisonment during World War II I’ve ever read: ” … this bleak chapter in American history, when Japanese bloodlines overshadowed American birthrights.” What a concise, solemn reminder during this 70th anniversary year of Executive Order 9066 when President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during World War II.

The powerful phrase is truncated from the book’s first chapter, “American Birthrights, Japanese Bloodlines” which introduces some of the imprisoned children – “more than 3,700 infants, toddlers, children, and teens” – who called Manzanar “home” from 1942 to 1945: “The civil liberties that should have been their birthright as American citizens were denied them during wartime. Their bloodlines marked them to be segregated from their non-Japanese peers and playmates. They left their homes, friends, and pets behind.”

Combining photographs culled from official government archives and personal collections with quotes from Manzanar’s children – most of them now in their 80s and 90s! – Children is richly dense with little known history in a single, slim volume. In addition to the Japanese American children are, surprisingly, photos and remembrances from some their Caucasian counterparts, the children of War Relocation Authority staff who lived mostly in a separate Administration Area. [Erica Harth, one of those non-Japanese Manzanar children, would grow up to become a lauded professor and author of Last Witness: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans.]

Caught in the chaos of sudden uprootings and bleak conditions, societal – especially familial – structures suffered and even disintegrated. Children, in all their innocence, quickly adjusted: “They sneaked past the barbed wire to go fishing, played marbles in the dust, and formed lifelong friendships. They also saw their parents become powerless, witnessed systematic injustice, and faced an uncertain future. … [Y]oung people experienced Manzanar very differently than their parents and grandparents.” And here, you’ll find glimpses of some of their remarkable, diverse stories …

In addition to the stories, editor Heather C. Linquist weaves in little known details (with photos, of course) about Manzanar, including its Toy Loan Library, Hospital School (for children with health conditions or disabilities that did not allow them to attend the regular camp schools), the Children’s Village (run by social workers Harry and Lillian Matsumoto and home to 101 children, many of whom had been removed from West Coast foster homes and orphanages), and even experiences of resettlement and relocation after war’s end. Perhaps the most touching of all is a special spotlight on the now-annual Manzanar High School Reunion which, with its aging student bodies, since 2004 “has been billed as the ‘last one’ but we haven’t stopped yet.” True testimony to the resilience of children … even when bloodlines overshadowed birthrights.

Tidbit: Small world moment I must share … editor Linquist has Smithsonian history! She interned at National Museum of American History where she “discovered a love of exhibit planning and writing,” training she later used to develop interpretive exhibits at the Manzanar National Historic Site!

And, I have to note one minor numbers-related discrepancy: page 122 uses ’110,000′ as the number of Japanese and Japanese Americans relocated while page 133 uses ’120,000.’ I’ve seen both numbers in various places … just not usually in the same book. Perhaps I’m reading something incorrectly … feel free to enlighten me!

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. And I did! Numbers answer kindly (expediently!) provided by Alisa Lynch, Chief of Interpretation at the Manzanar National Historic Site: “This issue is how the people are counted and when. More than 110,000 were ’evacuated’ from their West Coast homes, but 120,313 were in WRA custody (i.e., in the ten camps). That includes nearly 6000 children born in camps, others who transferred in, 219 non-Japanese Americans, etc.” She even provides an easy-to-read visual on page 2 of the Manzanar/National Park Service handout which you can access by clicking here. Talk about oh so grateful, near-instant satisfaction!

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2012

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November 10, 2011 · 9:42 am

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

Almost 10 years after Julie Otsuka made her spectacular literary debut with When the Emperor Was Divine, I remain even more convinced that Emperor is the best book I’ve ever read about the Japanese American imprisonment during World War II. Truth be told, Emperor ranks so high on my personal list of all-time revered titles that I felt unable to read Otsuka’s latest for many months; the thought that I might have another near-decade to wait for her next title haunts me still.

The Buddha in the Attic – recently named a 2011 National Book Award finalist – is another masterpiece. Otsuka distills nearly a half century of history into 129 exquisite pages of powerful intensity; like the very best poetry, every page has been reduced to the most essential details, moments, phrases, memories. Using a chorus-like ‘we,’ Otsuka’s eight spare chapters are chant-like revelations of the Japanese American experience.

“On the boat we were mostly virgins,” Otsuka begins, capturing Japanese picture brides early in the last century, traveling to the other side of the world to join husbands they have only seen in photographs. Some are as young as 14, still girls, filled with hope and expectation for building a new life with prosperous young men. What awaits at the end of their long journey is a shocking reality: “… we could not have known that when we first saw our husbands we would have no idea who they were.” The women have married 20-year-old photographs, fallen for beautiful promises written by someone else, bet their lives on complete strangers full of desperate lies.

The lives of these women in a harsh new world proves difficult, even fatal. They join their husbands out in the back-wrenching fields, and many endure nightly assaults. They will clean other people’s houses, raise other people’s children. Those who can will learn other people’s language, learn to eat other people’s food. Most will have children of their own – some will live beyond infancy, some will survive to give their parents great joy, others only heartbreak. The lucky will have their own homes, others will always live at the mercy of others. Finally, when the War comes and they are branded by their government as the enemy, most will go – in disbelief – without protest.

Once they are gone, Otsuka uses the final chapter to brilliantly, astonishingly flip the ‘us vs. them’ paradigm. Suddenly, “we” are the ‘real’ Americans who were not rounded up, who were not imprisoned for no other reason that looking like the enemy: some are “more than a little relieved to see the Japanese go,” although some of our younger children have nightmares having abruptly lost their classmates and friends. But now that they are gone, we finally take the time to read the fine print on the tattered relocation notices, although “what it was, exactly, that these instructions spelled out, none of us can clearly recall.” Oh, the consequences of selective amnesia …

Post-9/11, Buddha is both historical reminder and contemporary warning of the indelible effects of a ’you’re either with us or against us’-polarized world. Read and take heed.

Tidbit: On March 26, 2012, Buddha deservedly won the 2012 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Yipppeeee indeed!

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2011

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June 16, 2011 · 5:32 pm

The Mangrove Tree: Planting Trees to Save Families by Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore, collages by Susan L. Roth

The village of Hargigo in the tiny African country of Eritrea was once a landscape of dust and deprivation … until mangrove trees planted “by the shore of the salty Red Sea” started a chain of events that vastly changed village life for the better.

The trees’ leaves provide food for the hungry animals, who in turn make better milk for their offspring that causes the flocks to multiply which provides more meat and milk for the hungry villagers. The tree’s branches become firewood, while its roots are home for “many sea creatures” from which the local fisherman reap rich bounties. And, all the while, the Hargigo women continue to plant more mangrove saplings to nurture the cycle of improvement.

This miraculous tree-planting project belongs to Dr. Gordon Sato, a cell biologist by training, who never forgot his experiences as a teenager trapped in the deserts of Manzanar, one of the many U.S. prison camps that incarcerated 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry without cause during World War II. In memory of “his experiences of growing corn in the desert at Manzanar,” in hopes of transforming “those experiences into something good,” Dr. Sato named his international tree planting efforts The Manzanar Project. From Eritrea to Mauritania to Morocco, the good doctor is hoping (planning!) to eradicate poverty and hunger (not to mention reduce global warming) one village at a time!

Co-authors Susan L. Roth and Cindy Trumbore (who is also Cindy Kane) manage to weave two related stories into a glorious single title. Enriched by Roth’s striking mixed-media collages, the transformation of Hargigo alternates between a lovely, repeating poem on the left pages, while the right pages enhance the sparse verse with further details and explanation. Then follows Dr. Sato’s own story in the six-page “Afterword,” filled with photographs from his many experiences, including his multiplying trees and their planters hard at work.

Mangrove Tree is undoubtedly awe-inspiring, a necessity for every bookshelf, both public and private. It soothes and comforts, as it teaches and inspires. You need to read this with your children today … and then go and plant a tree together – as far as Africa, as close as your own back yard. Mangrove, ginkgo, dogwood, birch … the more the merrier, not to mention down right healthier!

Readers: Children

Published: 2011

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February 18, 2011 · 1:58 pm

Mei Ling in China City by Icy Smith, illustrated by Gayle Garner Roski

I have to admit that the unnecessary chopsticky font and the strangely-eerie illustrations set me off temporarily, but the old adage ‘never trust a book by its cover’ proved true in this case: this real-life story is well worth your attention.

Mei Ling lives in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, where her family operates a restaurant in China City – also known as Chinese Movie Land – created by Hollywood as its version of Chinese village life. The celluloid translation of Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth, for example, was filmed in part in China City with its yellowfaced stars. Oh, don’t get me started …

Digression aside, Mei Ling is missing her best friend Yayeko who has been shipped off with her family to Manzanar, a prison camp for Americans of Japanese descent, following the signing of Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The girls write each other as often as they can, and can only hope they will see each other again someday.

For now, Mei Ling’s life in China City revolves around her family restaurant where she waitresses after school. She prepares for the upcoming Moon Festival by running errands, meets friends along the way, joins in on the fundraising drive to help women and children refugees in China, and even meets legendary Chinese American actress Anna May Wong who writes a sizable donation in support of United China Relief. Still, thoughts of Yayeko are never far, as Mei Ling narrates her life to her faraway friend.

So will the girls finally reunite? Before you can get your answer, author Smith provides a historical overview of 1940s China City and Manzanar, with a note about the United China Relief campaign. She’s also managed to dig up eight pages of black-and-white period photos, far more evocative and informative than the illustrations.

I won’t spoil the final page for you: suffice it to say that you must check out the second printing of this book … but know that the original many-award-winning edition had an indispensable role in making the second-time-around incredibly phenomenal. Now go solve the mystery … and be amazed (yet again) at the power of words on the printed page!

Readers: Children, Middle Grade

Published: 2008, 2010 (second edition)

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February 20, 2010 · 11:19 am

The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles by Scott Kurashige

How fitting to finish reading University of Michigan Professor Scott Kurashige‘s debut title on the 68th annual Day of Remembrance, which marks the anniversary of the signing of Executive Order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt which led to the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Timing is everything … and better late than never, right? Especially since I’m supposed to be introducing him in a few hours to a waiting audience at the National Museum of American History (together with his co-guest, the fabulous playwright Philip Kan Gotanda)! I figured writing about his book this morning would be good practice indeed.

Shifting Grounds is a powerful read that brings together two seemingly divergent narratives (and how fitting we’re still in Black History Month, currently commemorating the Day of Remembrance). Combining detailed historical research with personal accounts, Kurashige presents the transformation of the city of Los Angeles “from white city to world city,” focusing on the trajectories of Japanese American and African American communities’ development through the 20th century.

Kurashige convincingly presents three pivotal periods during the century: During the two world wars, Japanese Americans and African Americans experienced “two overlapping processes of exclusion”; during World War II, Japanese Americans all but disappeared into U.S. prison camps while African Americans integrated with other non-Japanese minorities; and after WWII, the two communities experienced “two overlapping processes of integration that set the two groups apart and ultimately gave rise to multiculturalism.”

As Los Angeles grew exponentially after World War I, city leaders were able to construct a segregated city through a white racism that evolved from blatant Klan-type supremist violence to “more socially acceptable forms,” including housing discrimination, unequal employment, and political oppression. Shared experiences of white racism brought minority communities together, creating “a nascent sense of interethnic solidarity.”

With the advent of World War II, paths diverged dramatically. Japanese Americans became victims of Executive Order 9066 which negated their basic civil rights and sent them to U.S. prison camps for the duration of the war. African Americans benefited from Executive Order 8802 which “maintained Jim Crow policies in the military but outlawed discrimination by defense contractors.” For the first time, African Americans had seemingly equal employment opportunities. While the Japanese Americans were coerced into quietly submitting to imprisonment by their own leaders to prove their patriotism, African Americans celebrated a “Negro Victory” symbolized by the united wartime efforts of Black defense workers. As the U.S. government forcibly removed Japanese Americans, the African American community which grew to meet the employment demands of wartime factories moved into the vacated areas. Little Tokyo became Bronzeville (where legends like Charlie Parker and Miles Davis found grateful audiences).

As war ended, Japanese Americans slowly trickled back to Los Angeles. China became the next enemy and suddenly Japan was a major ally in the U.S. fight against communism. The 1952 McCarran-Walter Act brought an unexpected boon to Japanese Americans, providing long denied citizenship while opening Japanese immigration. But the legacy of imprisonment loomed large, and the submissive Japanese Americans were labeled the “model minority,” held up as shining examples of successful integration. African Americans were critical of the “stoic nature” of Japanese Americans, as the “Negro Victory” movement during the war effort transformed into agitated protests demanding equal rights. In spite of divergent paths, the Crenshaw neighborhood became a multicultural haven, playing an important role especially for younger Japanese Americans in the 1970s on a path to a new awareness. Upon these “shifting grounds,” Kurashige leaves a final image of a “possible future’ – the Hollywood Bowl and a local’s quote: “‘It’s the only place I know … where you can go and see an African American eating udon [Japanese noodle soup] next to a Japanese American eating grits.’”

Tidbit: Professor Scott Kurashige, together with playwright Philip Kan Gotanda, graced the Smithsonian stage to commemorate the 68th annual Day of Remembrance.

Readers: Adult

Published: 2008

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April 15, 2009 · 8:44 am

In Defense of Our Neighbors: The Walt and Milly Woodward Story by Mary Woodward, foreword by David Guterson

in-defense-of-our-neighborsIf such things are possible, this is actually (almost) a happy book about the Japanese American internment experience, as improbable as that sounds. Yes, the unfortunate Americans of Japanese descent who lived on Bainbridge Island in Puget Sound across from Seattle, Washington – who made up a substantial 10% of the island’s diverse population – were still forcibly removed from their homes and ended up sent to prison camps for three years during World War II.

But unlike some of their less fortunate inmates, Bainbridge Island’s Japanese Americans never lost touch with a loyal, supportive community led by a young couple, Walt and Milly Woodward, who together published the local paper Bainbridge Review. This dedicated pair, neither of them with any formal training in journalism, although Walt had been a Seattle reporter – used their island publication to condemn the rampant racism, the wartime hysteria, and when relocation proved inevitable, made sure that their Japanese American friends and neighbors stayed in contact with their island home. When over half of the Japanese American families returned home upon release – a substantially higher rate of return than the rest of the Northwest – island residents knew who had had babies, marriages, tragedies, and other such news, because the Woodwards had insisted on making regular updates of the prisoners’ everyday lives a priority in their Bainbridge Review. 

In Defense is a heartwarming collage of stories from both sides of the barbed wire fence … and how that communication stayed alive and well through the three-year wartime ordeal and beyond. It’s historical artifact with some never-before-published photos. It’s lessons on immigration and unjust laws inserted in between the human experiences that bring that history to life. Most of all, it’s an earnest, necessary reminder of how people help one another, look out for one another, and find true humanity in the worst of times. 

And the significance of that David Guterson foreword? Yes, he’s a Bainbridge Islander, but more importantly, the editor Arthur Chambers in his bestselling novel, Snow Falling on Cedars, is actually based on Walt Woodward himself. 

Readers: Young Adult, Adult

Published: 2008

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April 8, 2009 · 12:34 pm

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

hotel-at-the-corner-of-bitter-and-sweetWhen he deliberately decides he is his own man at age 13, Chinese American Henry Lee pledges to wait forever for Japanese American Keiko Okabe, who is one of the 120,000 innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry imprisoned during World War II. Beyond U.S. borders, war is waging, and Henry’s father cannot forget that his ancestral Chinese homeland is being eviscerated by the Japanese Army. Henry and Keiko would have been enemies, but instead as Americans – both born in the same Seattle hospital just months apart – they find forbidden first love.

More than four decades later, when the unclaimed belongings of those imprisoned Japanese American families turn up in the basement of a historic Seattle hotel under renovation, Henry is convinced that some of those abandoned treasures must belong to the Okabes. He’s thrown into a journey back in time … and sometimes, true love does last forever.

Yes, Jamie Ford (who is the hapa great-grandson of a Nevada mining pioneer who arrived in San Francisco from China in 1865!) writes a touching story that’s already made The New York Times bestseller list. Whoo-hoo and big congratulations!

BUT … I have to admit that too many historical and factual errors made for some annoying moments. They start on the novel’s second page … it’s 1986, which means Henry’s son couldn’t possibly have found solace on an online support group after his mother’s death, and even though Bruce Lee was resting peacefully in Lake View Cemetery then, his son Brandon doesn’t arrive until 1993. Those sort of erroneous details could have been easily avoided (not to mention millions of people out there speak Japanese, although you only need one to provide accurate translations, ahem). Maybe we can hope for corrections in the paperback edition? It’s already hugely successful in hardcover – and internationally, too, with foreign rights selling right and left – so a little more thorough editing can only make it more so, right? 

Readers: Adult

Published: 2009

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