Journey (Orchard Paperbacks) [Paperback]

Sheila Hamanaka (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Series: Orchard Paperbacks

Text and photographed details of a mural depict the history of the Japanese people in America.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Impassioned" prose and "brilliantly executed" paintings describe the experiences of Japanese immigrants in the first half of the century, with special emphasis on their incarceration during WWII; PW called this book "significant... dramatic and visually arresting." Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 4 Up-- Hamanaka has created a five-panel mural depicting the Japanese-American experience with particular emphasis on the watershed of that experience, the concentration camps. Here the mural is reproduced detail by detail with amplifying text. The entire mural in toto is reproduced at the end in a two-page spread. The paintings themselves are beautiful, bold, and moving, covering the public facts yet incorporating a personal touch in a cameo of the artist's siblings. When broken into smaller segments, as here, they reveal an extraordinary amount of detail, all of it meaningful. Hamanaka proves herself a lively yet scholarly writer as well. The anguish and horror of Japanese-Americans during World War II is placed clearly and vividly in context with narrative and contemporary quotations. Absorbing facts are brought to light, such as Germans at the Nuremberg Trials justifying prison camps, citing the American model. Earl Warren's stance is positively chilling, particularly in view of his later role as chief investigator of the Kennedy assassination. The prison camp protests and reprisals are also brought out with full pathos. More recent events such as the quest for reparations--legal, moral, and monetary--bring this journey to a fitting close. Hamanaka has created a visual monument to the struggle of Japanese-Americans, supplementing her original creation with prose of simple and unique power. There are other books on this subject--Kitano's The Japanese Americans (Chelsea House, 1987) , Davis' Behind Barbed Wire (Dutton, 1982) among them--but none with the punch and universality of this one.
- John Philbrook, San Francisco Public Library
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback
• Publisher: Scholastic (March 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0531070603
• ISBN-13: 978-0531070604
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,386,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great book with tons of facts, March 25, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Journey (Paperback)

This book really opened my eyes to how the "nationalist" Americans really treated the Japanese-Americans. This book totally blew my mind and made me angry. I was angry because we were just as bad as those nazi's. All in all i'd recommend this book if you want to learn the truth.