I hadn’t read anything about Japanese immigrants to America before and it was eye-opening to see how they were treated. I knew about the Japanese camps during World War II, but I never gave much thought to what those people had endured before. It’s length actually made me wonder at first if it was written for a young audience, but the quick dive into these women’s personal lives and thoughts corrected me. I was not expecting much from this short little book. The silence they leave behind is deafening. In a mass exodus, the Japanese will leave the coastal cities and be relocated inland. And then the word comes that they’re all going to be moved. What’s a Japanese to do? They purge themselves of their heirlooms and pictures of their families, but the accusations still fly. They work for years, raising children who reject them and their traditions and being seen as outcasts by the others living around them. Written in the collective first person, this story chronicles the Japanese brides who came to American after World War I in hopes of a better life. And we are the ones that suffer when we’re taken away and put into camps. We bear the children who we hope will grow up to be just like us, but much better. We work the fields of the wealthy white men in California, never having a moments rest. We came over from Japan on boats to meet husbands in pictures.
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