Japanese-American Internment

Cynthia Kadohata wrote Weedflower to honor her father's experiences in the Poston, Arizona internment camp during World War II.  While most middle school students know about the Holocaust, very few know about the infringements on civil rights that occurred right here in the United States.  Most, if not all, of the Japanese living on the West Coast were moved to camps in places like Manzanar or Poston.  Those Japanese who immigrated to the United States were often held in higher security facilities than those who were second or third generation.
     In the novel Sumiko is a young girl farming with her family in California when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.  Sumiko is separated from her grandfather and sent with the rest of her family to Poston.  The conflict in the novel is created partially by the fact that Poston is run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs since it is part of the Hopi reservation.  While this novel paints an interesting portrait of the era, it is not a story that moves along quickly as the plot is a little thin.  Sumiko learns to make friends in the novel and to come to terms with the events that have challenged her family, but these events are not enough to entice me to give this book my highest recommendation.

Butte Camp looking to the Southwest--National Archives

I liked the book; I found its portrayal of the discrimination faced by the Japanese during the war to be sad and, of course, unfair.  However, as my kids say not a lot of "action."  Still, it would be interesting to read this book or a similar one and compare it to the more recent Patriot Act passed after 9/11 when Americans seemed more than wiling to let the government compromise their civil rights in exchange for a greater sense of security.


The National Archives photos of the War Relocation Camps in Arizona provide a nice primary resource to act as a supplement to reading the novel.  The Library of Congress also has a Japanese American Internment lesson plan including oral histories and photographs.  Some of the photos are by famous photographers Dorothea Lange and Ansel Adams.