Write To Me: Letters From Japanese American Children to the Librarian They Left Behind by Cynthia Grady

One day Katherine Tasaki tells Miss Breed the librarian at the San Diego Public Library that she has to move, that all Japanese have to move. But Miss Breed is already aware of this. The Japanese looked like an enemy in a war far away and so they are being sent to a prison.

Miss Breed gave Katherine an addressed penny postcard with a stamp to send back to  her so she would know where Katherine had been sent.

Miss Breed also came to the train station when it was time for Katherine and the other Japanese in San Diego to leave. She was stunned to see so many Japanese-Americans who had tags attached to the clothing, and armed soldiers overseeing them. She brought books and more postcards.

After the Japanese Americans had left, Miss Breed received her first postcard. Soon more arrived, all postmarked Arcadia, California.  Miss Breed began sending boxes of books to this location for the Japanese children.  Miss Breed visited her friends in Arcadia too, bringing boxes of books for the children to read.

This kindly librarian also did much to make her fellow Americans aware of what was happening to Japanese Americans. She wrote articles about them and advocated on their behalf for a school and library at the internment camp. The children and their families were eventually transferred from California to a new camp in Poston, Arizona. The weather in Arizona could be harsh; very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer. This made many of the Japanese sick. Still Miss Breed faithfully helped her friends. She sent crafting materials, books and seeds.

After three long years, the war ended and the Japanese Americans were released from the camps. Most had lost everything, their homes and businesses. Katherine Tasaki and her family returned to San Diego and to her friend Miss Clara Breed.

Discussion

Write To Me tells the little known story of librarian Clara Breed who opposed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and who did all she could to help them during this difficult time.

Clara Estelle Breed was born to Rueben Leonard Breed, a minister and his wife Estelle Marie Potter in 1906 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Clara graduated from Ponoma College in 1927 and earned her Master of Library Science from Western Reserve University. She was hired as a children's librarian in 1928 at San Diego Library. After the war she would become the city librarian, a position she would remain in until her retirement.

Clara Breed

Following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Americans were relocated from San Diego as well as many other cities on the West Coast further inland. Many of Clara's patrons were children from Japanese families. When they learned they were to be sent to internment camps, they arrived at the library to turn in their library cards and to say good-bye. Clare Breed gave her young friends postcards and asked them to write her telling her where they were and what they needed. She sent them many things besides books, including candy, soap and toothbrushes.

But she also campaigned on their behalf, against Executive Order 9066 which was signed by President Franklin Roosevelt in February of 1942. This order classed certain areas as military areas and allowed for the removal of people living in there. This seemed to apply to those of Japanese heritage, although Germans and Italians were also placed in camps. Over one hundred thousand Japanese were displaced as a result. Clara Breed wrote letters admonishing officials that the principles and freedoms the United States was founded on must be upheld.

After the war, many of the children who knew Clara Breed returned to visit her in San Diego.When Clara Breed moved to a retirement home, she gave the letters and postcards she had received from the children to Elizabeth Kikuchi Yamada. Years later, Clara was the guest of honour at a reunion in 1991 of the Japanese Americans who had been sent to Poston, Arizona.

Write To Me tells the story of Clare Breed in an appealing, sensitive manner that allows younger readers to learn about war, prejudice and how some people do act on their convictions. In wartime, laws based on prejudice or fear are often put in place. This happened in the United States and Canada where Japanese, Germans, and Italians and others deemed "enemy aliens" were placed in internment camps.  Clare Breed however, believed that the United States needed to reconsider its policy of imprisoning people of Japanese ethnicity. These people were law-abiding and loyal to the United States. Some even went on to valiantly serve in the war for a country that treated them very badly. She sent food and necessities to them, she visited them and she advocated for them.

Grady includes an Author's Note which tells about Clara Breed, a Notable Dates in Clara Breed's Life, a Selected History of Japanese People in the United States which lists important historical dates, Source Notes that Grady used in her research and a list of books in Further Readings.

One thing that is missing in this story, is the mention at the very beginning of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese in December of 1941. It was this action that prompted the United States government to consider (as would be later proven to be incorrect) all people of Japanese heritage as possible enemies and to move them into internment camps away from the West Coast. The forced relocation by the U.S. Government is therefore not placed in the context of this event, and not explained in the picture book, except to say that it was due to a war half-way around the world. Except that war in the Pacific, was now brought to the United States by the Japanese. The executive order after the bombing was also likely due to decades of systemic racist policies in the United States directed towards Asians, particularly Chinese and Japanese.

Write To Me was illustrated by Amiko Hirao using Faber Castell pencils on Canson Mi-Teintes white paper. Her simple, soft drawings capture the essence of Clara Breed's story and the Japanese internment. Hirao has included some of the postcards written to Clara Breed in her illustrations. This picture book is essential in aiding young people understand a serious injustice done to innocent people mainly because there were different.

Book Details:

Write To Me by Cynthia Grady
Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge Publishing Inc.    2018