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1 of 1 copy available
Things get worse for Satomi—and all people with even a drop of Japanese blood—when Japan poses a threat to the United States. Her father joins the Navy, in part to fight for his country, and in part to protect his wife and daughter from racist citizens, but dies in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Rather than being celebrated as a hero, his death is ignored by the neighbors who shun Satomi and her mother. Shortly thereafter, they are taken to internment camps where they are treated like animals.
Satomi's sudden loss of freedom is a terrible thing to bear, and she is disgusted by the utter lack of privacy, the open latrines, the sewage that runs behind their barrack, and the poorly built hovels that allow stinging dirt and dust to enter during frequent storms. But in the camp she finds a community for the first time. Not all of the Japanese residents welcome her, but Satomi and her mother find good friends in the family housed next to them in the barracks, and in the camp doctor, who is drawn to Satomi's spirit and her mother's grace. Satomi cares for Cora, one of the young orphans at the camp, as a daughter.
Throughout it all, Satomi yearns for love. When she is finally freed from the internment camp, she heads east, finding a job, a shabby room, and several suitors in New York. There are men who would make her life easier, those who would take care of her, but Satomi insists on love—and finds it, in unexpected places.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 4, 2013 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781608194537
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781608194537
- File size: 2176 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 15, 2013
A shameful episode of U.S. history, the internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, is revisited, this time as experienced by an alienated Japanese-American teenager. The problem for Satomi Baker, the heroine of British writer Lindley's (The Private Papers of an Eastern Jewel, 2009) second novel, is that there are no other girls like her. Born of an American father and a second-generation Japanese-American mother, living in a small Californian rural community, she is a misfit: smart, popular enough, attractive to boys, but adrift somewhere between her mother Tamura's submissive charm and her father Aaron's jealous aggression. The time is the early 1940s; anti-Japanese feeling is rising, and when Aaron, a naval volunteer, is killed at Pearl Harbor, it's not hard to imagine the fate of the Baker women. Rounded up along with all the other Americans of full or partial Japanese ancestry, they are interned in a remote mountain camp where the harsh, unsanitary conditions intensify both Satomi's anger and Tamura's ill health. Yet sustaining friendships are made there, relationships which will help Satomi when her mother eventually succumbs to tuberculosis. After the war, the girl moves to New York, where events turn more fairy tale-like. Money and love enter the mix, and acceptance eventually arrives, at a price. Plotting turns mushy toward the end, but this is an empathetic story, delicately told, tailor-made for reading groups.COPYRIGHT(2013) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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