Those Who Helped Us: Assisting Japanese Americans During the War Spiral-Bound | November 22, 2022

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.

Basketball-loving Sumiko Tanaka, then 11, narrates this graphic novel about the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. Through her eyes, we watch as her family is forced from their home and subjected to indiscriminate racism as they are shipped off to the concentration camp called Minidoka in Idaho. But Sumiko and her 17-year-old sister Yuri also see acts of charity and solidarity from their non-Japanese neighbors and friends in the Seattle area that make them hopeful for the future. As the young girls struggle with the horrors of being imprisoned in the dusty desert, they also find solace in the fact that some people chose to help. This story highlights the actual actions and experiences of those neighbors and friends.