Megan's Initial thoughts on Japanese Internment Camps and Reaction to the first half of Weedflower

When looking at the websites about Japanese internment camps I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the U.S. treatment of the Japanese and Germany's treatment of the Jews during WWII. When I was younger I read a lot of books much like this one but about girls that were effected by the concentration camps during the Holocaust. The way the government "herded" up all these people and put them on trucks and trains and transported them like cattle to places of confinement are definately very similiar.

I was also interested in what these websites had to say about what life was like for the Japanese-Americans after the war was over. They might have been let out of the camps but there was still a lot of prejudice that they had to face. I'll be interested to see how Weedflower ends and if the story brings them through the war, and if so does it touch on a little of their life afterward.

I've read the first fifteen chapters which has brought Sumiko and her family to the Poston internment camp on the Indian reservation. I was drawn in from the very first page. I liked how the author started the whole book out with a list on the different ways it feels to be lonely and how Sumiko feels all of them. Sumiko describes the stock flowers, or weedflowers, as her favorite. On page 5 the narrator describes how Auntie and Sumiko sewed cheesecloth tarps to protect the flowers and that the stock flower didn't need protection. I wonder if this is referencing Sumiko in any way. Is she a beautiful flower that will grow and blossom despite the fact that she is not being protected? She has been through many "harsh elements"; her parents dying, feeling lonely, and now being seperated from her home and put in an internment camp. I have only read halfway through the book and it has already pointed out a lot of injustice. There is the way Sumiko and her family are treated because of their race, how Japanese immigrants have been treated in the past, the way her teacher teaches with his "P-I-G" game (that is just wrong no matter what race you are), and many other examples.

Another thing that I was surprised to find was how the Japanese-American and the Indian children talked about one another. Even though they were both groups that had experienced stereotyping and prejudice they still did it to each other. Sumiko's little friend in camp told her to hide from the Indian kids, well Native American if we use the politically correct term, so they wouldn't get scalped, and the Indian kids thought Sumiko would jab a sword into their stomachs if she felt threatened. This would be a good place to point out to students how prejudice and fear can hurt and seperate people. I'm interested to see if these children run into each other again and if they find out that they are both different than the stereotypes they believed about each other. I can't wait to read the rest of this book!