Kira-Kira by
A Japanese-American family struggles to build a new life in the Deep South of Georgia in this luminous novel, winner of the Newbery Medal. kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are people's eyes. When Katie and her family move from a Japanese community in Iowa to the Deep South of Georgia, it's Lynn who explains to her why people stop them on the street to stare. And it's Lynn who, with her special way of viewing the world, teaches Katie to look beyond tomorrow. But when Lynn becomes desperately ill, and the whole family begins to fall apart, it is up to Katie to find a way to remind them all that there is always something glittering -- kira-kira -- in the future. Luminous in its persistence of love and hope, Kira-Kira is Cynthia Kadohata's stunning debut in middle-grade fiction.
Journey Home by
After their release from a "concentration" camp, Yuki and her family try to reconstruct their lives. Even though the road to rebuilding their lives seems endless, in the end, it is their unyielding faith and courage that guide them home, reunited and hopeful.
Samurai of Gold Hill by
The story of a young boy and his father who must leave Japan for America because there is no place for a samurai asuch as his father. They come to Califonria in 1869 to become farmers.
For more Children's / Juvenile books on Japanese Americans, see:
Japanese Americans have a rich history in California, the Central Valley, and Turlock. The internment and relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II are major events in the history of the Untied States, and California in particular (Ellington & Easton, 2014).
Japanese Americans and the Racial Uniform : Citizenship, Belonging, and the Limits of Assimilation by 
Japanese Americans : From Relocation to Redress. by 
And Justice for All: An Oral History of Japanese American Detention Camps by 
Japanese American Millennials by 
This link opens in a new windowFull-text of documents from the War Relocation Authority (1942-1946) covering 10 Japanese-American relocation / incarceration campus. The old History Vault interface is still available.
One Hundred and One Ways by
"I may have spent most of my life in New Jersey, but the blood of a geisha courses through me yet." So writes Mako Yoshikawa in this extraordinary debut novel which is sure to evoke comparisons to the works of Amy Tan and Alice Walker. One Hundred and One Ways is the story of a woman who, finding herself torn between two men and two cultures, turns for answers to an unknown Japanese grandmother, once a famous geisha. If Kiki Takehashi's life is dramatically different from the one lived by her reserved Japanese-American mother, it is light-years away from that of her grandmother, whom she knows only through old family stories. Kiki has recently become engaged to Eric, a handsome, successful lawyer in New York City. But at the same time she is haunted--quite literally--by the memory of her friend Phillip, killed the previous year in a mountaineering accident. As Kiki herself is well aware, her incessant mourning for Phillip--her love of a ghost--is endangering her chance at real-life happiness with Eric. Yet her relationship with Eric is also complicated by her fear that he is attracted to her only because of his erotic fascination with Asian women. Kiki has never so much as met her grandmother, the woman for whom she is named. Still, thoroughly American though she is, she feels a secret kinship with the nearly legendary Yukiko, whose impoverished family sold her as a young girl to a geisha house. Kiki is swept up by the story of this strong, proud, passionate woman who, against all odds, in a time and place far different from her own, found the love that has so far eluded the rest of the Takehashi women. For years, Kiki has collected questions to ask her grandmother--queries on subjects ranging from love, loss, and family to the myth of exoticism which hangs over Asian-American women and geishas alike. In the wake of Phillip's return as a ghost, Kiki awaits Yukiko's imminent visit to America with a renewed eagerness, trusting that this unknown woman will provide answers to the mysteries of her past and guide her on her way into the future.
Two Homelands by
Two Homelands (Futatsu no sokoku) tells the powerful story of three brothers during the years surrounding World War II. From the attack on Pearl Harbor to the Pacific War, relocation to Manzanar, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and the Tokyo war crimes trials, we follow the lives of Kenji, Tadashi, and Isamu Amo, the California-born sons of Japanese immigrants. The eldest, Kenji, must grapple with what it means to belong to two nations at war with one another and to face betrayal by both. Tadashi, in school in Japan when war breaks out, is drafted into the Japanese army and renounces his U.S. citizenship. Later Kenji and Tadashi find themselves on opposite sides of a battlefield in the Philippines; although they both survive the conflict, their relationship is destroyed by the war. Isamu, the youngest and the most thoroughly American of the brothers, loves John Wayne movies and gives his life to rescue the lost Texas battalion fighting in France. Popular Japanese novelist Toyoko Yamasaki spent five years interviewing Japanese-Americans and researching documentary sources to assemble the raw material for her book. Through the story of the Amo family, she forces readers to confront the meaning of "love of country" as her characters encounter prejudice and suspicion on both sides of the Pacific. Almost a quarter century after its Japanese publication, this English-language translation affords a valuable opportunity to understand the postwar reassessment of what it means to be Japanese in the modern world.
Yokohama, California by
Yokohama, California, originally released in 1949, is the first published collection of short stories by a Japanese American. Set in a fictional community, these linked stories are alive with the people, gossip, humor, and legends of Japanese America in the 1930s and 1940s.
Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless : A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific by
From the 1920s to the eve of the Pacific War in 1941, more than 50,000 young second-generation Japanese Americans (Nisei) embarked on transpacific journeys to the Japanese Empire, putting an ocean between themselves and pervasive anti-Asian racism in the American West. Born U.S. citizens but treated as unwelcome aliens, this contingent of Japanese Americans--one in four U.S.-born Nisei--came in search of better lives but instead encountered a world shaped by increasingly volatile relations between the U.S. and Japan. Based on transnational and bilingual research in the United States and Japan, Michael R. Jin recuperates the stories of this unique group of American emigrants at the crossroads of U.S. and Japanese empire. From the Jim Crow American West to the Japanese colonial frontiers in Asia, and from internment camps in America to Hiroshima on the eve of the atomic bombing, these individuals redefined ideas about home, identity, citizenship, and belonging as they encountered multiple social realities on both sides of the Pacific. Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless examines the deeply intertwined histories of Asian exclusion in the United States, Japanese colonialism in Asia, and volatile geopolitical changes in the Pacific world that converged in the lives of Japanese American migrants.
Inclusion : How Hawaiʻi Protected Japanese Americans from Mass Internment, Transformed Itself, and Changed America by
Following December 7, 1941, the United States government interned 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry evicted from scattered settlements throughout the West Coast states, yet why was a much larger number concentrated in the Hawaiian Islands war zone not similarly incarcerated? At the root of the story is an inclusive community that worked from the ground up to protect an embattled segment of its population. While the onset of World War II surprised the American public, war with Japan arrived in Hawai'i in slow motion. Responding to numerous signs of impending conflict, the Council for Interracial Unity mapped two goals: minimize internment and maximize inclusion in the war effort. The council's aspirational work was expressed in a widely repeated saying: "How we get along during the war will determine how we get along when the war is over." The Army Command of Hawai'i, reassured by firsthand acquaintances, came to believe that "trust breeds trust." Where most histories have shielded President Franklin D. Roosevelt from direct responsibility for the U.S. mainland internment, his relentless demands for a mass removal from Hawai'i--ultimately thwarted--reveal him as author and actor. In making sense of the disparity between Island and mainland, Inclusion unravels the deep history of the U.S. "sabotage psychosis," dissecting why many continental Americans still believe Japan succeeded at Pearl Harbor because of the unseen hand of Japanese saboteurs. Contrary to the explanation of hysteria as the cause of the internment, Inclusion documents how a high-level plan of mass removal actually was pitched to Hawai'i prior to December 7, only to be rejected.
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