Ken Mochizuki

This book takes Fred Rogers advice to "look for the helpers" to heart as it follows a fictional Japanese family into internment during World War II -- rousted from Seattle and imprisoned in Idaho -- and spotlights the fellow and very real Americans who didn't question their patriotism or loyalty but instead extended sympathetic and helping hands . . . even through barbed wire.

The script could have used a little more editing for some technical and pacing issues but it delivers on content. Kiku Hughes' art is good when it comes to the characters, but without the color used to enhance her art as in her own graphic novel on the Japanese American internment, Displacement, the backgrounds look exceedingly sparse and downright blank, bringing too much white space to most pages.

Still, this is a nice addition to the growing body of graphic novels about this dark stain on America's history.… (more)

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher WW Norton, and the author Ken Mochizuki for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. As someone who has read a number of Japanese American internment literature, I welcome the addition of discovering more works in this body and canon of work. I find the history personal as an Asian-American living near places of Japanese American history (i.e. in the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, and Tacoma). Learning about the unjust dispossession, displacement, and incarceration of Japanese-Americans continues to be relevant today to the deportation of Latine and Southeast Asian people. Before I read this work, I was only familiar with Yuri Kochiyama as a figure of Japanese American reparations, but through Mochizuki's labor and care work I learned about Michi as well. Mochizuki gives a brief overview that introduces Michi to the reader and has made me aware of her work and curious enough to read it. I'm glad Mochizuki also mentions and details the internment of Japanese-Latine people. I appreciate Mochizuki's efforts in crafting and researching this history and opening up the dimensions of this event for me. Because of Mochizuki, I want to learn more about Michi and Japanese-Latine people. Thank you Mochizuki for your work.… (more)

1.I would recommend this book to middle elementary kids.
2.This book goes through a first hand experience of what it was like to live interment camp. They would play baseball all the time. Then he went back to where he lived before the interment camp. Then he plays really well but gets called mean things when he is up to bat or playing baseball in general.
3.I would recommend this book to middle level elementary classrooms. I think that it is quite heavy for a young elementary student but very informational for a middle level student in terms of culture.… (more)