It is Koji Miyamoto's thirteenth birthday on Sunday, December 7th, 1941. He has the radio on, listening to the Lone Ranger when the broadcast is interrupted by the announcement that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor. Koji and his mother don't know where Pearl Harbor is, so they get out their atlas. Meanwhile they learn that thousands are reported dead or wounded.
Koji wonders if his father might have flown one of the attacking planes but his mother tells him this is ridiculous. Rumors are that President Roosevelt will declare war on Japan.
The next day Koji begins to experience hostility from people as he walks to school. He overhears people suggesting that every Japanese person should be sent back to Japan. And at school he gets into a fight after another student calls him a "Jap". Instead of helping him, Principal Dorfman accuses Koji of being a troublemaker.
Koji eats lunch alone and is refused entry onto a streetcar. He arrives home to find his mother crying and learns that FBI agents have taken their radio from anyone who is Japanese.
Koji's mother believes that things will quiet down, but the abuse continues both at school and on the street. Then they receive a letter informing them that Koji is to be sent to a "relocation camp" because he's considered an "enemy alien".
The next morning his mother's attempted intervention at the army office doesn't work and instead Koji and his mother are assigned to the Alameda Downs Assembly Center. At home they learn they can only take two suitcases with them and they sell the rest of their possessions. They are also questioned by the FBI who want to know when Koji's mother last heard from her husband and Koji's father, Ichiro. She tells them he returned to Japan because his father was ill.
On relocation day, Koji and his mother Adeline are placed on a bus where they meet Ichiro's former employers, Hana and Yoshi Asai. They travel across San Francisco Bay to the Alameda Downs Assembly Center, which used to be a horse-racing track. There they are assigned to Stall 33, a horse stall that stinks of horse manure and urine. Dinner is a large room crammed with people eating spam, beans and turnip.
The next morning when Koji takes a walk through the camp he is set upon by a group of teens and called "gaijin". Kohi gets into a fight, breaks a window and is taken to the commander who assigns him to work with his family's friend Mr. Asai.
As the weeks go by, Koji continues to deal with the Japanese boys who refuse to accept him because of his fair hair and freckles, and who force him into stealing. He also believes his mother's apparent friendship with the camp commander is the source of gossip about her. But with Mr. Asai's help, Koji is able to break free of the gang tormenting him.
Discussion
Gaijin is based on the real life story of the author's great-grandmother Adeline Conlin, an Irish American woman who married a Japanese man in the 1920's. This inter-racial marriage was not accepted in neither Japan where the couple lived and had a daughter named Mary, nor in America where Adeline and Mary returned after the devastating earthquake of 1923. However, they found they were not accepted in Boston either, so they moved to Los Angeles, California. Mary married and had two children. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, because Mary was part Japanese, she was forced to move with her two children to an internment camp. Adeline, who was not Japanese went with her daughter and grandchildren, travelling to Owens, California and then to Manzanar War Relocation Center. In 1943, the family was sponsored to move eastward, to Chicago. Falkner, in his back material titled, Finding Adeline, only learned about his family's past when he saw a post on the National Park Service-Manzanar website by Adeline's great-granddaughter, Anita asking for anyone who might be related to Adeline to contact her.
Through the graphic novel format, Faulkner portrays the story of a young Japanese American boy trying to find his place in the tumultuous world of World War II and the Pearl Harbor attack. The story is a personal one, because his own family experienced the lack of acceptance in both Japan and in America for being biracial. The focus in Gaijin is on the racism that a Japanese American boy, Koji experiences when America is attacked by the Japanese. The attack serves to focus the underlying racism towards Asian Americans that already existed in California and in other parts of the United States up until this time.
Koji not only experiences racism from white Americans, but when he arrives at the internment camp, he finds himself being attacked by Japanese Americans as well. He is called "gaijin", a derogatory term that means "outsider". Mr. Asai explains to Koji that the term is a very unkind one and he tells him to refer to his father as Issei or first generation, and that Koji is Nisei or second generation.
Faulkner is able to effectively portray many of the problems Japanese Americans experienced during World War II. For example, many Japanese Americans were interrogated by the FBI who suspected them of being spies. In another example, Mr. and Mrs. Asai assume they have found someone decent to rent their home while they are away, in the internment camp. However, when Mr. Asai visits his property on a day pass, he discovers the tenants have broken into his shed and are using his property as though it is their own. Many Japanese Americans lost everything they owned prior to being sent to the camps, including their possessions, their homes, their businesses and their land.
Koji and Adeline's experiences are portrayed in illustrations using mainly brown, sepia and blue, creating a dreary and sad mood expected in being sent away to a concentration camp in a dusty desert. Koji's dreams are done in vivid red, orange and yellow.
Gajin offers young readers an excellent starting point for learning about this important era in United States history and to explore racism and how it impacts both perpetrators and victims. Faulkner includes a variety of resources at the back including Books and Periodicals, Documentary Films and Websites.
Book Details:
Gaijin: American Prisoner of War by Matt Faulkner
New York: Hyperion Books 2014
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