A book that will take you into an often overlooked or hidden part of American history during WWII, and one that desperately needs to be brought to light, shared, talked about, and faced. This is the story of a group of young Japanese-Americans who live in San Francisco, in a community of immigrants (and descendants of immigrants) called Japantown. When we first enter their story, tensions are building between White and Asian citizens, and even young kids aren’t able to escape harassment and violence. But that’s nothing compared to what’s about to happen – they will be forced into camps where they will be held prisoner in appalling conditions for no reason other than their ethnicity.
The story bounces around between the fourteen protagonists. Each has their own unique personality and reaction to the events. Some shut down. Some rebel. Some enlist in the army as a way out. Some are there with family, some are alone. But each story brings a face to a vital part of history that reverberates through families and communities who were affected to this day – both in America and here in Canada.
Not only were families forced into incarceration camps, but while they were there, they lost everything. Homes, businesses, belongings – gone. Stolen, vandalized, sold. When they were finally able to leave the camps and return to their homes, it was to discover that not only did they have no homes, but they were shunned and excluded from society.
This book does a brilliant job of taking something shocking and humanizing it. Each character is written with such care, understanding and love, and yet they are all so different. They feel real, and each heartbreak and loss they suffer feels real. It’s a YA book, but reading it as an adult, it didn’t feel like it pulled a single punch or left out a single element of the suffering experienced by these Americans at the hands of their supposed countrymen.
I read another book that dealt with this issue in Canada, Forgiveness, and it similarly provided a vital piece of missing history that I had never been taught. I have since learned that the PNE, a fairground that’s known for attracting families from all over the lower mainland throughout the summer, was used as an internment camp for Japanese Canadians here during WWII. I learned how much Japanese families lost right here in Vancouver when they were ripped from their homes and put on trains that sent them out to work, as unpaid labour, on farms in other parts of the country. Often without even a proper shelter (some were forced to live in chicken coops in a part of the world with particularly harsh winters).
This history isn’t one that we should allow ourselves to forget. It’s one of the many racially-driven atrocities that have been visited on a community or ethnic group by White Americans and Canadians, and that history is still felt right down through the years by the descendants of the people who lived through them (or didn’t). I can’t recommend this book enough. If you have never heard of this part of history, you need to learn about it. If you have heard about it but don’t know the details, here they are. And if you or your family was one who had everything taken from you like the families on these pages, here is the honest history that should be taught in schools. It’s a vital book. We all need to read it.
“All around me, my friends are talking, joking, laughing. Outside is the camp, the barbed wire, the guard towers, the city, the country that hates us.
We are not free.
But we are not alone.”
We Are Not Free, is the collective account of a tight-knit group of young Nisei, second-generation Japanese American citizens, whose lives are irrevocably changed by the mass U.S. incarcerations of World War II.
Fourteen teens who have grown up together in Japantown, San Francisco.
Fourteen teens who form a community and a family, as interconnected as they are conflicted.
Fourteen teens whose lives are turned upside down when over 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry are removed from their homes and forced into desolate incarceration camps.
In a world that seems determined to hate them, these young Nisei must rally together as racism and injustice threaten to pull them apart. – Goodreads
Book Title: We Are Not Free
Author: Traci Chee
Series: No
Edition: Hardback/Audiobook
Published By: HMH Books for Young Readers
Released: September 1, 2020
Genre: WWII, Japanese Internment Camps, Historical Fiction, Racism
Pages: 400
Date Read: July 12-20, 2021
Rating: 9/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 4.39/5 (4,060 ratings)