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THE JOURNAL OF BEN UCHIDA: Citizen 13559 Mirror Lake
Internment Camp
by Barry Denenberg
Scholastic
ISBN: 0590485318
Ages 8-10
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Following the Japanese bombing of Hawaii's
Pearl Harbor in 1941, the United States entered World War II against
Japan. Anti-Asian sentiment was strong, and the US government ordered
Japanese immigrants and American citizens of Japanese origin to enter
internment camps for the duration of the war. This fictional journal
takes the point-of-view of a Japanese-American boy, Ben Uchida, who
realizes that "my face was the face of the enemy," in spite of his
loyalty to the United States.
Ben's ordeal begins when his father, an optometrist, is arrested by
the FBI: "The government is afraid that men like Papa will help the
Japanese bomb California," Ben says in disbelief. Ben and his mother
and sister must sell all their property and move into a crowded barracks;
the boy describes the pain of others who had to give away their pets
or throw away precious family heirlooms.
Ben makes the best of the strange situation by playing baseball with
other kids and exchanging sarcastic letters with Robbie, his (white)
best friend, back in San Francisco. In the privacy of his journal,
he expresses his true feelings, from boredom to anger. When the internees
must listen to a speech by a "project director," he wisecracks, "That's
one of the things I love about this place. Nothing is called what
it is. I mean this guy is the project director. Not the *prison camp*
director or the warden. Of course, I'm living in a place called Mirror
Lake where there's no lake, so what can you expect?"
Ben talks about the irony of celebrating Independence Day in the camp,
reports with disgust on a shooting by the Military Police, and tells
how the Army recruits soldiers from among the internees. Author Barry
Denenberg doesn't make Ben a passive or willing observer. Ben considers
himself an American, and he bitterly resents his unfair imprisonment.
Ben's fictional memoir begins to explain an unfortunate part of US
history, and readers will learn more from the book's photos and notes
on "Life in America in 1942." Some of the images come from a famous
collection by Toyo Miyatake, a professional photographer who documented
his own time in an internment camp. The disturbing pictures and true
stories reveal that, although Americans today pride themselves on
respecting diversity, attitudes and laws were much different just
58 years ago.
--- Reviewed by Nathalie op de Beeck
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