Follow the lives of Japanese Americans who were put in camps on US soil after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. An interesting perspective given the current refugee/immigration politics.

Hello Kind Reader,

Just a quick note that I've registered this book at BookCrossing.com, so that I can keep up on where it goes, who reads it, and what they thought of it. Please visit www.BookCrossing.com/207-13231665 to make a quick journal entry, then pass the book along to someone else who will appreciate it. We can all track this book's journey and the lives it touches forever more!

Thank You!

Release to the one-line BC in DC holiday game.

I picked this in the first line game. It's a book that has been on my rasar screen for several years, so I'm kind of excited to add it to Mt. TBR.

I found this book very educational. I knew something about the Internment camps going into the book, having grown up in a small town in Utah where the 3 Japanese families in the area had chosen to settle down after leaving Topaz instead of trying to return to California, and having read the Korematsu case in law school. However, I was really quite surprised to learn that Asians were legally barred from owning real property in the U.S. and that Asian immigrants could not become citizens -- in light of such blatant discrimination and their outcast status, it would make sense that people would doubt their attachment to the U.S. as a country. But, of course, that was not why they were interned -- rather, it was based on the same prejudices that prompted the discrimination and mistreatment prior to the war. And yet the overwhelming majority of Japanese immigrants never found that the mistreatment justified disloyalty to the U.S. Most seem to have felt as the author's father stated during interrogations, "When your father and mother fight, do you want your father to kill your mother or do you just want the fighting to stop?"

The story of the disintegration of this family when the challenge of mistreatment by the government was added to the stresses they already had is sad, but relatable. The fact that the story is told in a matter-of-fact tone without judgment or recrimination makes it that much more compelling, because you can determine for yourself that the internment went against the professed beliefs of the U.S. psyche and that the treatment of the Japanese was unfair at best and, on occasion, inhumane. And the saddest part of the whole story is the internalization of the idea that being "foreign" or "different" was wrong and that they were therefore to blame for being discriminated against -- it is an occurrence that is all too common and too seldom discussed.

This book is one of many being passed along to potential readers at the Kensington Day of the Book Festival by members of BookCrossing in Washington DC (BCinDC).

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One of many books given away at the Gaithersburg Book Festival for a new reader to find & enjoy!

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