When Can We Go Back to America by Susan H. Kamai

 When Can We Go Back to America by Susan H. Kamai

Title:  When Can We Go Back to America

Author:  Susan H. Kamai

Narrated by:  Allison Hiroto, Kurt Kanazawa, Andrew Kishino, and Mizuo Peck

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 21 hours and 42 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster.  Thank-you!

 What historical period of time would you like to learn more about?

 I knew a bit about the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent, but When Can We Go Back to America is a full deep dive into this period of history.  I learned a lot.  This was a great audiobook experience as the stories were told in first person accounts from the people who lived it.  As my college history professor has always said, it is best to learn history from first person accounts.

 One item I learned that surprised me is that American citizens of Japanese descent and Japanese American citizens that were prominent were arrested on December 7^th and taken away.  I didn’t know that it had happened so fast.  The FBI had been compiling lists well before December 7^th and were ready.  It was heard to listen to the stories of the American citizens taken away from their homes, giving up everything to life in what was termed as that time as concentration camps.  An image that really stuck with me is that the children that were Boy Scouts wore their uniforms and helped everyone out. 

 The audiobook also focused on the 442^nd Infantry unit that was put together of the American citizens of Japanese descent. This until became one of the most decorated units in World War II and fought on the European front.  The stories of bravery were inspiring.

 The story told through the end of the war and when the American citizens of Japanese descent returned home.  They no longer had homes, farms, or anything and had to start over.  It was hard, and especially hard for the decorated soldiers who returned home to find they and their families had nothing.  It took forty years, but in the 1980s, the people who were interned received compensation from the government.

 At this point, I thought the audiobook was finished, but there was still seven hours left.  It was seven hours of biographies of all of the people whose stories were used in this book.  They were riveting, sad, inspiriting, and truly the story of America.  I also enjoyed that George Takei of Star Trek fame was included.  I read and loved his graphic novel about his internment experience, They Called Us Enemies, with my son Daniel.

 I first really learned of the Japanese internment when I read Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson in the 1990s.  This book was mentioned as was the real-life person who the story was based on. 

 When Can We Go Back to America got its name from a child who asked this question as they couldn’t believe they were still in America as they lived in a concentration camp.  This story is important for all Americans to read or to listen to.  We need to make sure we remember the rights of American citizens and ensure that this never happens again. 

 This book was intriguing and told a very important story in American history.  I highly recommend it.

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker

They Called Us Enemy is a powerful graphic novel that tells the story of George Takei and his childhood spent in the concentration camps that were set up for Japanese during WWII.  I have spent my lifetime enjoying George Takei in Star Trek the original series and the movies.  As Takei has moved into social media, I have enjoyed his humor as well as his activism.

I ordered this book from the Scholastic Book order to read with my eleven-year-old son Daniel.  He loves historical fiction and graphic novels so it seemed like a great fit for him.  We both enjoyed the novel.  Daniel says some other historical fiction novels that he has been trying to read have been hard to understand and get into, but that this novel he was able to really grasp the essence of the story and enjoy it.  We both were appalled learning that 120,000 Japanese American families were imprisoned during WWII.  Besides their freedom, their homes and businesses were taken away from them as well.  It’s hard to envision that our country would treat its own citizens this way, but the book makes a compelling argument at the end that we are going back to this with our treatment of refugees at the border.  The illustrations were wonderful and compelling.

I also enjoyed that Takei also talked briefly about how he got involved in Star Trek as well.  I am a Star Trek superfan.

Overall, They Called Us Enemy is an important first-person account of a dark period of American history.