by Traci Chee
First published 2022
In Japantown, San Francisco, fourteen Nisei teenagers have built their world around each other. These second-generation Japanese American citizens share everything: neighborhood streets, family dinners, dreams for the future. Then Pearl Harbor changes everything. The U.S. government orders over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry from their homes into remote incarceration camps. The tight-knit group watches their community disappear overnight. Families pack what they can carry. Businesses close forever. Friends scatter to different camps across desolate landscapes. Inside the camps, the teens struggle to maintain their bonds as racism and injustice press against them from all sides. Some resist. Others try to prove their loyalty. All face impossible choices about identity, survival, and what it means to be American when your country treats you as the enemy. Their individual stories weave together into a collective portrait of young people fighting to stay connected when the world seems determined to tear them apart.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, young-adult
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, identity
Setting: Japantown, San Francisco
Period: World War II
365 pages · Paperback · Clarion Books
Content warnings: racism