First published 2014
Tomi Itano picks strawberries on her family's California farm in 1942. At twelve years old, she speaks only English and has never set foot in Japan. She considers herself completely American. Then Pearl Harbor changes everything. Store windows display signs reading "No Japs Allowed." Neighbors who once bought strawberries now cross the street to avoid her family. The government arrests Tomi's father as a suspected spy. Officials force the remaining Itano family members onto trains bound for an internment camp in Colorado. Thousands of other Japanese American families suffer the same fate. Inside the camp, Tomi watches her world shrink to barbed wire and guard towers. Anger replaces her former certainty about belonging in America. She struggles with a painful question that has no easy answer: what must she do to prove her loyalty to a country that treats her as an enemy? Sandra Dallas illuminates this shameful chapter of American history through the eyes of a young girl learning that citizenship offers no protection against fear and prejudice.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, world-war-ii
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, found-family
Setting: California, Colorado, Japan
Period: 1942
216 pages · Hardcover · Sleeping Bear Press
Content warnings: racism