14 August 2024 PEARL by Sherri L. Smith and Christine Norrie, Scholastic/Graphix, August 2024, 144p., ISBN: 978-1-338-02943-7

“I've got your picture, I've got your picture

I'd like a million of ya over myself

I want a doctor to take your picture

So I can look at you from inside as well

You've got me turning up and turning down

And turning in and turning 'round

I'm turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so

Turning Japanese

I think I'm turning Japanese

I really think so”

– The Vapors (1980)

On top of America’s original sin of slavery, there have been so many immigrant populations vilified and scapegoated and cheated after arriving in America. But it is difficult to argue that any have taken more of a beating than did Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. There are plenty of great stories out there for tweens and teens portraying forced removal and lives lived in Manzanar or Topaz or one of the other internment camps. Prisons that housed men, women, and children who did nothing wrong, and who were as American as the rest of us. 

But what would happen if you suddenly found yourself stuck on the other side, the enemy side?.

The history of that harsh treatment of Japanese Americans is at the core of this fictional tale of thirteen-year-old Amy. With a mom whose family goes back generations on Hawaii, and a Japanese immigrant father, she finds herself in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. Her great-grandmother, a pearl diver in her younger years, falls sick in Japan right around the time that Amy’s little brother is born. Having to leave her parents and the new baby, she is dispatched to be with the family she’s never before met, in a country she has never before seen. 

Amy comes to develop real family ties with her great-grandmother and other relatives, who all live near Hiroshima. Thoughts of the atomic bomb that would soon be dropped on that city tick-tick-ticked in my head as her story progressed. 

Knowing that she speaks English, Amy is forced into work for the Japanese government, translating radio messages. At the same time, her parents are being forced into a California-based Japanese internment camp where–Amy eventually learns–her baby brother dies. 

Would you blame her for feeling bitter about the country of her birth? Where is home?

Amy will barely survive the atomic blast and slowly heals. So now what does she do?

PEARL is a historical fiction graphic novel with a punch. It’s a quick read that will be perfect for tweens who already know some basics of WWII. 

Richie Partington, MLIS

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