A review by car_car22
Grandfather's Journey by Allen Say

This is about a boy who is telling the story of how his grandpa left Japan to go to the New World. It was a three week journey and when he got there he saw fields, factories, mountains and rivers. He met so many new people all from different decent. His favorite place thought was California. Later he went back to Japan to marry his childhood sweetheart and they both came back to California where they had a baby girl and raised her there. When their daughter grew up they went back to Japan to see where he grew up and to show his daughter but she didn't belong there. When the boy was born he loved visiting his grandfather and hearing about California. That was when the war began in 1939, they returned to where his childhood had been, and he longed to visit California. When he grew up he moved to California he loved it but he longed to be home. It doesn't matter which country he was in he always missed the other one, and now is when he really understood his grandfather.

This story was non-fiction also and was a young boys recollection of his grandfather's life. He moved from Japan to California and for most of his life he went back and forth until the war. I am guessing that this war was World War 2 and the specific event that destroyed his village must have been wither the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki when the villages were completely destroyed. We can get a sense of the time line of when all of his grandfathers traveling was taking place and what other historical events were going on at that time. We were also able to see the effects of the bombing on the survivors spirits.