BookDragon Japanese American imprisonment during WWII Tag

The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake [in Christian Science Monitor]

12 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Japanese, Japanese American, Repost

'The Translation of Love' seeks meaning amid the heartache of post-war Tokyo World War II is over, but the struggle to survive remains a daily battle for too many residents of 1947 Tokyo. Debut novelist Lynne Kutsukake gathers a remarkable cast from three countries in The...

Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds by Pamela Rotner Sakamoto [in Library Journal]

07 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost

"Nothing seemed amiss that first Sunday in December 1945." In California, 21-year-old Harry questions why his white employer is sending him home. His comment that he had nothing to do with Japan's bombing of Pearl Harbor gets him promptly fired. In Hiroshima, 4,000 miles away, 17-year-old...

United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas + Author Interview [in Bookslut]

07 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Author Interview/Profile, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese, Japanese American, Korean American, Repost

Alternate histories have been "a thing" for decades. Lauded titles are many, but World War II-related novels in which the so-called good guys don't win seem to have yielded quite a few bestsellers through the decades, including The Plot Against America by Philip Roth, Fatherland...

The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende, translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson [in Library Journal]

09 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, European, Fiction, Japanese American, Jewish, Latina/o/x, Repost, Translation

Multiple narratives swirl around Alma Belasco, a Polish teenager who escaped the Nazis in 1939 and arrived in San Francisco to share a privileged life with an indulgent aunt and uncle. Now 73, Alma is a favorite resident in a senior facility, devotedly looked after...

Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield

03 Sep, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Audio, Fiction, Japanese American

Patty Takeda moves in with her mother for the two weeks before her wedding. On the third day in her old room, she's woken by the sound of the doorbell, and is alarmed to hear her mother Lucy use the word "Inspector." Just a few blocks...

Dust of Eden by Mariko Nagai

19 Mar, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Poetry, Verse Novel/Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

Please correct me if I'm wrong here: The Japanese American imprisonment has been the focus of many, many titles for audiences of all ages, via fiction, non-fiction, poetry, short stories, plays, graphic titles, picture books, and more, but I believe Mariko Nagai's Dust of Eden...

The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941 by Kirby Larson

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific, Young Adult Readers

How’s this for new math: the first 286 pages hold about the same weight as the final 25 pages. The fictional diary expounds and entertains, revealing a 13-year-old’s West Coast experiences during World War II; the ending “Life in America in 1941” section illuminates and...

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

07 Dec, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Hawaiian, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonethnic-specific

Today – 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...

Requiem by Frances Itani

15 Oct, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Audio, Canadian, Canadian Asian Pacific American, Fiction, Japanese American

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...

Sylvia & Aki by Winifred Conkling

22 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Fiction, Japanese American, Latina/o/x, Middle Grade Readers

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...

Children of Manzanar edited by Heather C. Lindquist

24 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

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: " ...

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

10 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Young Adult Readers

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...

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

16 Jun, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Absolute Favorites, African, Children/Picture Books, Japanese American, Nonfiction

The village of Hargigo in the tiny African country of Eritrea was once a landscape of dust and deprivation ...

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

18 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Children/Picture Books, Chinese American, Japanese American, Middle Grade Readers, Nonfiction

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...

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

20 Feb, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Black/African American, Japanese American, Nonfiction

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...

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

15 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Young Adult Readers

If 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...

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Chinese American, Fiction, Hapa/Mixed-race, Japanese American

When 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...

Japanese American Resettlement through the Lens: Hikaru Carl Iwasaki and the WRA’s Photographic Section, 1943-1945 by Lane Ryo Hirabayashi, photographs by Hikaru Carl Iwasaki, foreword by Norman Y. Mineta [in Bloomsbury Review]

08 Apr, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Nonfiction, Repost

Amazingly, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), managed to generate some 17,000 photos of Americans of Japanese ancestry who spent the majority of the duration of World War II in prison camps for little more than looking like the enemy. Of these photos, Hirabayashi looks at the...

Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire by David Mura [in Bloomsbury Review]

01 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Fiction, Japanese American, Repost

Already an established nonfiction writer and poet, David Mura presents his debut novel, about a not-so-young Japanese American self-proclaimed itinerant historian who must delve into his own family's past – populated by both a...

Heirlooms: Letters From a Peach Farmer by David Mas Masumoto [in San Francisco Chronicle]

04 Nov, by Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center in Adult Readers, Japanese American, Memoir, Nonfiction, Repost

As I write, I'm into the ninth of 16 hours that make up the audio version of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Learning about the degrading...