This graphic novel from 2014 recounts the internment of Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The story is about a half-Japanese boy named Koji, who is forced into a prisoner of war camp on the suspicion of his father, who's visiting his ailing father in Japan, of being a spy for the Imperial Japanese. Not willing to allow her preteen son stay in a prison camp by himself, Koji's white American mother joins the internment camp as well.
On the streets of San Francisco, Koji is viewed as the enemy and a possible spy or enemy agent of the Japanese. In the camp, Koji is also an outsider, particularly amongst the teen boys because of his mixed heritage. Koji is bullied, his mother is accused of being a whore, and the commander of the camp sees him as a trouble maker. With the help of a wise elderly Japanese man, Koji is given one last chance to find himself. But when the detention site is forced to move from the shipyards of Alameda to the New Mexican desert, Koji must decide to run from himself and flee with some of the boys in the camp or to finally make peace with his jumbled status, accepting his incarceration and transfer East with his mother.
The setting of this story is 100% true. During World War II, Japanese Americans along the West Coast of the United States were forced to leave their jobs and home and were imprisoned in about a dozen camps nationwide. The camps were converted barns, with manure and filth everywhere or makeshift barracks hastily and dangerously erected. These sites were overcrowded and there was not enough food, provisions or decent care for the hundreds and thousands of prisoners encamped. Reports have said that a hardened prisoner at Alcatraz in 1942 had it better than the American POWS whose only wrong was their nationality or heritage.
You might think with the prejudices Koji experienced in San Francisco, maybe the internment camps were for the good and safety of the Japanese Americans. But with very little choice, these families were left with no win solutions. They had to sell or rent their possessions and property and suspend their livelihoods. After the war, some families would return to their homes only to find that the unscruplous whites that they trusted their estates to sold them off or claimed legal but unethical squattership. So much for looking out for the safety of our fellow man...
As for Koji and his mother- they are fictional characters but they are based on the exploits of artist and writer Matt Faulkner's great aunt. She was a white American married to a Japanese man. The two had a daughter who by December 7th, had a daughter as well. Not willing to see her daughter and granddaughter detained, Faulkner's aunt went into the prison camps with them until eventually finding sponsorship for the family to move to Chicago under parole conditions.
The story of the Japanese American internment is sadly a forgotten part of American history. I don't recall ever learning about it in school or college and I was a History Major. It wasn't until I saw the 1999 film 'Snow Falling On Cedars' that I even learned of the plight of the Japanese American during World War II. I learned about the Dust Bowl- a lot! Why not this?
It may not seem like a very important part of American history. But not 15 years ago, we almost repeated history when such camps were suggested after the events of 9/11. Thank God we didn't listen to those voices calling from the desert again.
Gaijin is a dynamic story that left me speechless. It should be required reading in schools. I wish had a couple million dollars because I'd snatch the rights to this book up and make it into a feature film. It's that good and that important to not just American history but to the survival of the human race as well.
Worth Consuming
Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.
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