In this Book

summary
Lily Nakai and her family lived in southern California, where sometimes she and a friend dreamt of climbing the Hollywood sign that lit the night. At age ten, after believing that her family was simply going on a “camping trip,” she found herself living in a tar-papered barrack, nightly gazing out instead at a searchlight. She wondered if anything would ever be normal again.
     In this creative memoir, Lily Havey combines storytelling, watercolor, and personal photographs to recount her youth in two Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. In short vignettes snapshots of people, recreated scenes and events a ten-year-old girl develops into a teenager while confined. Vintage photographs reveal the historical, cultural, and familial contexts of that growth and of the Nakais’ dislocation. The paintings and her animated writing together pull us into a turbulent era when America disgracefully incarcerated, without due process, thousands of American citizens because of their race.
     These stories of love, loss, and discovery recall a girl balancing precariously between childhood and adolescence. In turn wrenching, funny, touching, and biting but consistently engrossing, they elucidate the daily challenges of life in the camp and the internees’ many adaptations. 

Winner of the Evans Biography Award. 
Selected by the American Library Association as one the Best of the Best from University Presses.
Finalist in the cover design category in the Southwest Book Design and Production Awards. 
 

Table of Contents

restricted access Download Full Book
  1. Cover
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication
  2. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-viii
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Foreword
  2. Cherstin Lyon
  3. pp. ix-xii
  4. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Preface
  2. pp. xiii-xiv
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 1. Camping at Santa Anita
  2. pp. 1-50
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 2. Settling at Amache
  2. pp. 51-110
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 3. Seasons, Joys, and Sorrows
  2. pp. 111-140
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. 4. Stepping toward Freedom
  2. pp. 141-198
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Epilogue: The Bow
  2. pp. 199-204
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. 205-206
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
  1. Glossary
  2. pp. 207-208
  3. restricted access
    • Download PDF Download
Back To Top

This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. Without cookies your experience may not be seamless.