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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
Kazuko was born here in Seattle, along with her 3 siblings, but her parents were both immigrants from Japan. (Issei is 1st genereation, Nisei is 2nd generation) They lived for a time in the hotel that her parents owned and operated, but were eventually able to move into an apartment and later a house. There was a lot of racial stigmatism and it only got worse in the late 30's. Then Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Kazuko and her family were forced to move to "Camp Harmony" at the Puyallup fairgrounds and then to Camp Minidoka in Idaho. After a year there, she was able to move east and live with a family in the midwest, work for a while and then go back to college.
A fascinating introspective look into a horrible time in US history.
A fascinating introspective look into a horrible time in US history.
I enjoyed this lovely memoir about growing up Japanese-American in Seattle before and during WWII. Being familiar with the Seattle area, I loved learning about the history of the neighborhoods and the thriving Japanese community before the war. The author was a teen during this time, so we hear about public school, the Japanese language school that all the children had to attend after school, local businesses, and food--the yummy food. The trip the family took to visit Japan in the 1930s was also fascinating and heartbreaking. I picked up this book to learn more about life in internment, but this was actually a relatively small part of the book. Being a well-educated young woman, the author didn't stay in the camps as long as others did (for example, her parents). She was able to find a (white) sponsor and move to the Midwest, even though the camps were still in operation in the West. The undertones of racism are threaded throughout, both before Pearl Harbor and after, but the memoir is not a deep examination of how racism affected the author and her family, but more about how life continued. The prefaces and introductions focused more on the deeper societal and political issues than the bulk of the book. Overall, it was well-written and a good glimpse into Japanese-American history through the eyes of one young woman.