Pearl Harbor & Japanese American Internment: Books for Children & Teens

by Katie Yamasaki

When brothers Taro and Jimmy and their mother are forced to move from their home in California to a Japanese internment camp in the wake of the 1941 Pearl Harbor bombing, Taro daringly escapes the camp to find fresh fish for his grieving brother.

In this elegant love story that sheds light on a dark chapter of American history after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Tama works in a prison library where she befriends a man who also seeks solace in pages bursting with color and light.

by Ken Mochizuki; illustrated by Dom Lee

A Japanese American boy learns to play baseball when he and his family are forced to live in an internment camp during World War II, and his ability to play helps him after the war is over.

by Amy Lee-Tai; illustrated by Felicia Hoshino; Japanese translation by Marc Akio Lee

Under the harsh summer sun, Mari’s art class has begun. But it’s hard to think of anything to draw in a place where nothing beautiful grows—especially a place like Topaz, the internment camp where Mari’s family and thousands of other Japanese Americans have been sent to live during World War II. Somehow, glimmers of hope begin to surface—in the eyes of a kindly art teacher, in the tender words of Mari’s parents, and in the smile of a new friend. 

by Yoshiko Uchida; illustrated by Joanna Yardley

Emi, a Japanese American in the second grade, is sent with her family to an internment camp during World War II, but the loss of the bracelet her best friend has given her proves that she does not need a physical reminder of that friendship.

by Graham Salisbury 

Tomi was born in Hawaii. His grandfather and parents were born in Japan and came to America to escape poverty. World War II seems far away from Tomi and his friends, who are too busy playing ball on their eighth-grade team, the Rats. But then Pearl Harbor is attacked by the Japanese, and the United States declares war on Japan. Japanese men are rounded up, and Tomi's father and grandfather are arrested. It's a terrifying time to be Japanese in America.

by Lois Sepahban

Near the start of World War II, young Manami, her parents, and grandfather are evacuated from their home and sent to Manzanar, an ugly, dreary internment camp in the desert for Japanese-American citizens.

by Winifred Conkling

At the start of World War II, Japanese-American third-grader Aki and her family are sent to an internment camp in Poston, Arizona, while Mexican-American third-grader Sylvia's family leases their Orange County, California, farm and begins a fight to stop school segregation.

by Sandra Dallas

After Pearl Harbor is bombed by the Japanese, twelve-year-old Tomi and her Japanese-American family are split up and forced to leave their California home to live in internment camps in New Mexico and Colorado.

by Shirley Parenteau

When her neighbors demand that the Japanese friendship doll in her father's museum be destroyed following the attack on Pearl Harbor, eleven-year-old Macy hides the doll to keep it safe.

by Camellia Lee; illustrated by Eric Freeberg

Sumiko Adachi's life changes after Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. When an arbitrary dividing line is drawn through Phoenix, Sumiko finds herself forced into a confinement camp. Her best friend, Emi, is not. Can Sumiko and Emi maintain their friendship when one of them is imprisoned and the other remains free?

by Elizabeth Partridge; illustrated by Lauren Tamaki

Weaving together powerful photographs, firsthand accounts and stunning original art, this important work of nonfiction examines the history, heartbreak and injustice of the Japanese American incarceration.

by Michael O. Tunnell

In March 1943, twenty-seven children began third grade in a strange new environment: the Topaz Relocation Center in Utah. Together with their teacher, Miss Yamauchi, these uprooted young Americans began keeping a classroom diary, with a different child illustrating each day's entry. Their full-color diary entries paint a vivid picture of daily life in an internment camp: schoolwork, sports, pets, holidays, health—and the mixed feelings of citizens who were loyal but distrusted.

by Lois Lowry; illustrated by Kenard Pak

Lois Lowry looks back at history through a personal lens as she draws from her own memories as a child in Hawaii and Japan, as well as from historical research, in this stunning work in verse for young readers.

by Cynthia Grady; illustrated by Amiko Hirao 

Through the three years of their internment, the children correspond with Miss Breed, sharing their stories, providing feedback on books, and creating a record of their experiences. Using excerpts from children's letters held at the Japanese American National Museum, author Cynthia Grady presents a difficult subject with honesty and hope.

by Virginia Loh-Hagan

Developed in conjunction with educator, advocate, and author Virginia Loh-Hagan to reach children of all races and encourage them to approach our history with open eyes and minds. Japanese American Incarceration explores the events in a comprehensive, honest, and age-appropriate way.

by Andrea Warren

Presents a biography of Norman Mineta, from his internment as a child in Heart Mountain Internment Camp during World War II, through his political career in Congress where he was instrumental in getting the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 passed.

by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott; art by Harmony Becker

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What is American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?

by Matt Faulkner

With a white mother and a Japanese father, Koji Miyamoto quickly realizes that his home in San Francisco is no longer a welcoming one after Pearl Harbor is attacked. And once he's sent to an internment camp, he learns that being half white at the camp is just as difficult as being half Japanese on the streets of an American city during WWII. 

by Kiku Hughes

On a visit to San Francisco, Kiku finds herself transported in time back to the 1940s Japanese-American internment camp that her late grandmother, Ernestina, was forcibly relocated to during World War II.

by Ken Mochizuki; illustrated by Kiku Hughes

In this blend of fiction and nonfiction, two young Japanese American sisters try to make sense of a world where their government imprisons them in World War II concentration camps while some of their friends and neighbors come to their aid.

by Kevin C. Pyle

In 1977 suburban Chicago, Kyle runs wild with his friends and learns to shoplift from the local convenience store. In 1941 Berkeley, the Himitsu family is forced to leave their home for a Japanese American internment camp, and their teenage son must decide how to deal with his new life. But though these boys are growing up in wildly different places and times, their lives intersect in more ways than one, as they discover compassion, learn loyalty, and find renewal in the most surprising of places.

by Matt Faulkner

A graphic novel/prose hybrid which tells the story of a young Japanese American man who leaves his family in the Manzanar internment camp to fight in the European theater during World War II, and of his ten-year-old sister who, frustrated over her brother risking his life for the government that imprisoned them, decides to stop talking until he returns.

by Traci Chee 

For fourteen-year-old budding artist Minoru Ito, her two brothers, her friends, and the other members of the Japanese American community in southern California, the three months since Pearl Harbor was attacked have become a waking nightmare: attacked, spat on, and abused with no way to retaliate—and now things are about to get worse, their lives forever changed by the mass incarcerations in the relocation camps.

by Misa Sugiura 

Katsuyamas never quit—but seventeen-year-old CJ doesn't even know where to start. She's never lived up to her mom's type A ambition, and she's perfectly happy just helping her aunt, Hannah, at their family's flower shop. She doesn't buy into Hannah's romantic ideas about flowers and their hidden meanings, but when it comes to arranging the perfect bouquet, CJ discovers a knack she never knew she had. A skill she might even be proud of. Then her mom decides to sell the shop—to the family who swindled CJ's grandparents when thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps during WWII. Soon a rift threatens to splinter CJ's family, friends, and their entire Northern California community; and for the first time, CJ has found something she wants to fight for.

by Monica Hesse 

Teens Haruko, a Japanese American, and Margot, a German American, form a life-changing friendship as everything around them starts falling apart in the Crystal City family internment camp during World War II.

by Jamie Ford 

When artifacts from Japanese families sent to internment camps during World War II are uncovered in Seattle, Henry Lee embarks on a quest that leads to memories of growing up Chinese in a city rife with anti-Japanese sentiment.

by Emily Inouye Huey

With the recent death of her mother and the possibility of her family losing their farm, Samantha Sakamoto does not have space in her life for dreams, but when faced with prejudice and violence in her Washington State community after Pearl Harbor, she is determined to use her photography to document the bigotry around her.

by Andrew Fukuda

In 1935, ten-year-old Alex Maki from Bainbridge Island, Washington is disgusted when he’s forced to become pen pals with Charlie Lévy of Paris, France—a girl. He thought she was a boy. In spite of Alex’s reluctance, their letters continue to fly across the Atlantic—and along with them, the shared hopes and dreams of friendship. Until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the growing Nazi persecution of Jews force them to confront the darkest aspects of human nature.

by Lawrence Goldstone

Constitutional law scholar Lawrence Goldstone takes young readers through the key events of the 19th and 20th centuries leading up to the fundamental injustice of Japanese American internment. Tracing the history of Japanese immigration to America and the growing fear whites had of losing power, Goldstone will raise deeply resonant questions of what makes an American an American, and what it means for the Supreme Court to stand as the "people's" branch of government.

by Connie Goldsmith with Kiyo Sato

In this moving account, Sato and Goldsmith tell the story of Sato's internment years, describing why the internment happened and how it impacted Kiyo and her family. They also discuss the ways in which Kiyo has used her experience to educate other Americans about their history, to promote inclusion, and to fight against similar injustices.

by Susan H. Kamei

An oral history about Japanese internment during World War II, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, from the perspective of children and young people affected.

by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James D. Houston

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp with 10,000 other Japanese Americans. Along with searchlight towers and armed guards, Manzanar ludicrously featured cheerleaders, Boy Scouts, sock hops, baton twirling lessons, and a dance band called the Jive Bombers. Farewell to Manzanar is the true story of one spirited Japanese-American family's attempt to survive the indignities of forced detention and of a native-born American child who discovered what it was like to grow up behind barbed wire in the United States.

by Albert Marrin

Uprooted takes a close look at the history of racism in America and carefully follows the treacherous path that led one of our nation’s most beloved presidents to make the decision to round up over 100,000 of its own citizens based on nothing more than their ancestry and, suspicious of their loyalty, kept them in concentration camps for the better part of four years. Meanwhile, it also illuminates the history of Japan and its own struggles with racism and xenophobia, which led to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, ultimately tying the two countries together.