japanese american children

"In March 1943, twenty-seven children began third grade in a strange new environment: the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Together with their teacher, Miss Yamauchi, these uprooted young Americans began keeping a classroom diary, with a different child illustrating each day's entry. Their full-color diary entries paint a vivid picture of daily life in an internment camp: schoolwork, sports, pets, holidays, health--and the mixed feelings of citizens who were loyal but distrusted"--Provided by publisher.

"Whem Waka's mother suspects her twelve-year-old daughter can't understand basic Japanese, she makes a drastic decision to ship Waka to Tokyo to live with her strict grandmother and reconnect with the culture and master the language. Goodbye friends, end-of-sixth-grade parties, and fun, and goodbye summer vacation. Plucked from her straight-A-student life in rural Kansas and sent halfway across the globe, where her reading levels are embarrassingly low, Waka embarks on what feels like the hardest five months of her life: learning an incredibly complicated writing system called kanji, dealing with the social politics of classmates who think she's illiterate, and attempting to understand her complicated Obaasama. Even though this is the country her parents came from Waka has never felt more like an outsider"--Jacket flap.

Tells the story of Japanese American children who corresponded with their librarian, Clara Breed, while they were imprisoned in World War II internment camps for three years.

Brief essays and captioned black-and-white photographs document the experiences of Japanese American children and young adults at the Manzanar War Relocation Center.