My Lost Freedom
A Japanese American World War II Story
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- £7.49
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- £7.49
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving, beautifully illustrated true story for children ages 6 to 9 about growing up in Japanese American incarceration camps during World War II—from the iconic Star Trek actor, activist, and author of the New York Times bestselling graphic memoir They Called Us Enemy.
February 19, 1942. George Takei is four years old when his world changes forever. Two months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declares anyone of Japanese descent an enemy of the United States.
George and his family were American in every way. They had done nothing wrong. But because of their Japanese ancestry, they were removed from their home in California and forced into camps with thousands of other families who looked like theirs.
Over the next three years, George had three different “homes”: the Santa Anita racetrack, swampy Camp Rohwer, and infamous Tule Lake. But even though they were now living behind barbed wire fences and surrounded by armed soldiers, his mother and father did everything they could to keep the family safe.
In My Lost Freedom, George Takei looks back at his own memories to help children today understand what it feels like to be treated as an enemy by your own country. Featuring powerful, meticulously researched watercolor paintings, this is a story of a family’s courage, a young boy’s resilience, and the importance of staying true to yourself in the face of injustice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Embracing a child's wide-eyed perspective of historical events, activist and actor Takei details his family's incarceration in Japanese prison camps during WWII. Takei is four years old during the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, after which "the lives of all Japanese Americans were suddenly and drastically changed." Following President Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan, a February 1942 presidential order forces the Takeis, along with all other Japanese Americans on the West Coast, from their Los Angeles home. Pages detail the family's time at Arkansas's swampy Camp Rohwer ("a strange and magical place" where the author caught tadpoles in a drainage ditch) and Northern California's Tule Lake, a maximum-security prison with "huge, rumbling tank patrols." Lee's crisp mixed-media illustrations echo the text's childlike tone (when the family is held at a racetrack, Takei "thought it would be fun to sleep where the horsies slept") in portraying individual, familial, and communal experiences throughout a "hard, terrible war." A glossary and pronunciation guide, notes, and photos conclude. Ages 6–9.
