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This is sort of a throwback Thursday (#tbt) kind of thing:  A few years back, I penned a handful of essays on Japanese American Legal History for an earlier version of the Cynthia Leitich Smith Children’s Literature Resources; now, revised (slightly), they are available on my web site!

Being of Japanese and German descent ("hapa"), I originally wrote these essays out of a concern that, to the extent that the history of Japanese Americans was known, such knowledge focused almost entirely on the Internment, at the expense of other aspects of the societal and legal regime that affect, and have affected, Japanese Americans.
  
Although the essays include case cites, they are intended to be readable by a general audience. :-).

Here's the link to the splash page.

Japanese American Legal History (General) discusses immigration and naturalization issues, as well alien land laws.  Japanese American Legal History (The Internment) discusses the World War II internment of Japanese Americans and the related Supreme Court cases. Finally, Japanese American Legal History (Enemy Aliens and Habeas Corpus) discuss other legal aspects of internment and treatment of enemy aliens and habeas corpus generally.

For more general information on Japanese American history, check out the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles.

Felicia Hoshino, Japanese translation by Akiko Hisa,
Sora and the Cloud
Immedium, 2012.

Bilingual: English/Japanese

Ages: 3-8

Sora and the Cloud is award-winning illustrator Felicia Hoshino’s debut as an author. Featuring Sora, a little boy whose name means “sky,” this very delicate, whisper-like story in English and Japanese is about Sora discovering the world with the help of a fluffy cloud friend. And how appropriate that cloud and sky should come together!

While Sora and Cloud float around town dreaming up adventures, little Sora gets to see many familiar places (some readers will recognize the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Chinatown) and to learn more about his Japanese heritage. “Like a mobile in the breeze, Sora’s sky adventure spins all around him,” until he drifts gently into sleep and back down to earth, where more adventures await. The last page shows Sora and his family relaxing together under a big tree – the image of his little sister looking up to the sky and saying hello to a cloud fittingly pointing to the universality of children’s sense of wonder and boundless imagination.

Fans of Hoshino’s illustration work in A Place Where Sunflowers Grow and Little Sap and Monsieur Rodin will find the watercolors/mixed media in this bilingual treat a treasure trove to pore over and marvel at. The double spread of cute ants busily moving around town, matching Sora’s impression of people as tiny ants when seen from up above, is priceless. It adds a touch of sweet humor to a story that is all warmth, delicacy and gentle embrace.

Sora and the Cloud soars in more ways than one, and is a perfect story to share with very young ones who are starting to look at the world with wonder and amazement.

The short Japanese phrases and cultural references sprinkled throughout the book are translated and explained in the end matter, where we also learn that a portion of the book’s proceeds go to the Japan Earthquake Relief.

Aline Pereira
December 2012

Edited and with a Foreword by Holly Thompson,
Tomo
Stone Bridge Press, 2012.

Ages: 12+

‘Tomo’ means ‘friend’ in Japanese and the purpose of this Anthology of Teen Stories is to offer friendship to Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake of 11 March 2011: specifically, the book is dedicated to the memory of those who lost their lives and to “all the young people of Tohuka”.  Author Holly Thompson (The Wakame Gatherers, Orchards) has gathered contributions from creators of prose, poetry and graphic narrative, as well as translators, whose shared connection is Japan.  Their work makes for a remarkable collection.

Many of the contributors’ names such as Alan Gratz, Wendy Nelson Tokunaga, Debbie Ridpath Ohi,  Shogo Oketani, or Graham Salisbury may already be familiar to readers; others such as Naoko Awa (1943-1993) or Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) will be less so, though famous in Japan.  A great deal of Tomo’s success lies in its blend of expertly translated older stories with contemporary, new writing, and this is true also of the stories’ content.  Many modern Japanese phenomena colour the stories, such as the particular fashion of Harajuku girls (“I Hate Harajuku Girls” by Katrina Toshiko Grigg-Saito) or the Purikura photo sticker booths (“Signs” by Kaitlin Stainbrook), yet these sit easily alongside more traditional stories such as the magical Ainu fable “Where the Silver Droplets Fall”, transcribed and translated into Japanese by Yukie Chiri (1903-1922) and translated into English by Deborah Davidson.  The anthology is all the richer for its varied array of writing, and its success is also in a great part due to the skill of the different translators involved.

The thirty-six stories are divided into sections: Shocks and Tremors, Friends and Enemies, Ghosts and Spirits, Powers and Feats, Talents and Curses, Insiders and Outsiders, and Families and Connections.  The opening story, “Lost” by Andrew Fukuda, is the gripping account of a girl regaining consciousness in a hospital bed following the Kobe earthquake in 1995; the other four stories in that opening section, including Tak Toyoshima’s graphic strip “Kazoku”, all have the raw immediacy of being set in the aftermath of the March 11^th disaster.

Among the other stories, readers will find stories to suit every mood: thought-provoking tales of conflict, spine-tingling ghost stories (I’m glad all these happen to have fallen to my reading in hours of daylight!), ostracism and friendship, romance, magic and surrealism.  Yearning to belong is a thread running through many stories, and the intensity for those characters seeking their identity is heightened where they are part of a bicultural family.  Nor does the collection flinch from addressing racial prejudice or the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War.

As with all good short-story anthologies, Tomo needs to be read slowly in order to savour the intense individual flavors of its contents.  Framed by an extract from David Sulz’s translation of Miyazawa’s thought-provoking poem “Be Not Defeated by the Rain” as well as Holly Thompson’s moving Foreword, and a glossary and note on the book’s contributors (a rich mine for future reading), Tomo is a very speci

Do read this lovely interview with Allen Say, which appeared in The Oregonian last week. Just the title, “Portland author and artist Allen Say’s books for children unfold in luminous dreams” tells you straightaway you’re in for a treat… Interviewer Jeff Baker shares with us his sneak preview of Say’s new book Drawing From Memory, due out next year – this promises to be something really special, a graphic novel adaptation of his autobiographical The Ink-Keepers Apprentice.

The Bracelet by Yoshiko Uchida, illustrated by Joanna Yardley (Philomel Books, 1993) recounts the story of a Japanese American girl named Emi.  It is 1942 and Emi is about to leave her home in San Francisco for an internment camp further inland.  It is an uncertain and precarious time.  Just before Emi’s departure, her friend Laurie Madison shows up at the door with a gift.  It is a heart bracelet.  Emi receives the gift gladly, swearing that she will “never, ever take it off.”  But in the hustle and bustle of the move, Emi loses the bracelet and for the first time, despite all the other difficulties she has faced with her family during their ordeal, she wants to cry.  Will she recover the bracelet?  Or rather, what will she do if she doesn’t?

I read this story to my daughter, expecting a certain sort of ending and getting another one, and this is was what surprised me about this book.  Emi has an epiphany about her lost bracelet that is both simple and profound.  Objects are not the repositories of our memories; our minds are.  Despite the loss of the bracelet, Emi knows that she will never forget the friendship she had with Laurie and this is an important truth for Emi to realize about herself and her situation.  Illustrator Joanna Yardley has done a wonderful job of depicting a very realistic-looking Emi as a shy and contemplative girl; I was especially struck by an image of her face in which the details are very fine, right down to Emi’s eyelashes.

Reading this book gave me an opportunity to explain to my daughter that Emi’s experience was similar to those of her grandfather’s and my great aunt’s.  She herself made the connection and I elaborated a little on the differences between the Canadian and American experiences.  I knew about Yoshiko Uchida’s childrens’ books on the topic from before but this book made me want to seek out more by her!

Wednesday nights is film nights at the National Japanese American Historical Society (NJAHS).  This Wednesday, May 26, they will be screening a documentary “Children of the Camps” by Satsuki Ina made in 1999.  If you are in the Bay area, you might want to check it out.  The NJAHS is located in the historic Japantown of San Francisco which is a delightful area to visit.  The show starts at 6:30 and runs til 8:00.