Thin+Wood+Walls



**Summary** "Eleven-year-old Joe Hanada likes playing basketball with his best friend, Ray, writing plays and stories, and thinking about the upcoming Christmas holiday. But his world falls apart when Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor. His country goes to war. The FBI takes his father away. And neighbors and friends in his hometown near Seattle begin to suspect Joe, his family, and all Japanese Americans of spying for the enemy. When the government orders people of Japanese heritage living on the West Coast to move to internment camps, Joe turns to the journal his father gave him to record his thoughts and feelings. Writing journal entries and haiku poetry offers some relief as Joe struggles to endure life in Tule Lake War Relocation Camp—days filled with boredom, concern for his father, and worry for his brother, who joins the American army to prove the bravery and loyalty of Japanese American citizens. Thin Wood Walls is a powerful story of a boy who grows up quickly in a changed world."

"In this first-person narrative, readers find out what it was like to be a young Japanese American boy in Seattle after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. First Joe's immigrant dad is arrested and held in secret. Then the rest of the family is removed to internment camps. Joe's older brother can't wait to join the army and prove his loyalty, and he fights the Nazis in Europe, but that doesn't reduce the prejudice and the family's hardship. There have been several books about the Japanese American internment--fiction, nonfiction, and even a few picture books--including Ken Mochizuki's //Baseball Saved Us// (1993) and Yoshiko Uchida's autobiographical accounts. Like some of those, this one makes history the drama, and Patneaude scrupulously reports the facts and shows the wide range of attitudes among Japanese Americans and whites, citizens and immigrants, even among members of one family. Basing his story on extensive research and interviews, the author does a fine job of bringing the daily experience up close through the story of an American kid torn from home. //Hazel Rochman// //Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved"// (Booklist)
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